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BURNT POWDER; 

OR, 

THE YOUNG ARMY DETECUVc. 


A TALE OF THE SLAUGHTER AT SPOTTSYLVANIA. 


By ANTHONY I\ MORRIS. 


Copyrighted, 1883. 

Entered at the post-othce, N . Y., as .second class matter. 






Vol. I. 


POCKET EDITION, 


No. 7. 




OR, 


The Young Army Detective. 


A TALE OF THE SLAUGHTER AT SPOTTSYLVANJA. 


I o 

Vr 



1883 . 



% 



Copyrighted 1883, by The Novelist Publishing Co* 


BURNT POWDER. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE WEIRD BEACON BUILDER. 

Our story opens in the month of May, 1864. 

The thunders of the Wilderness were yet lingering in the sullen 
air; the dense and gloomy woods were heaped with slain, and still 
the armies of Grant and Lee held stubbornly to the terrible com- 
bat which history itself has hesitated to describe. 

The thousands of heroes who had fallen in that battle below the 
Rapidan, without having accomplished any favorable result, at 
last showed the Union general how pitiably useless was the fight, 
and on this Saturday the orders for a new movement had gone 
forth. 

The Union army must plant itself between Lee and Richmond. 

The objective point was Spottsylvania Court House. 

The trains were moving toward Chancellorsville to park ; the 
corps of Warren, Sedgwick and , Hancock were in motion ; the 
Brock road bristled with the vast lines of the boys in blue, who 
felt that from the carnage among a foe that had fought from com- 
parative invisibility, they were on the eve of another mighty 
struggle, wherein another record of fallen thousands was in 
store. 

On the right clanked the sabers and thudded the hoofs of Sheri- 
dan’s cavalry, and the jangling accouterments of Hammond’s 
mounted men sounded in the wake of Hancock. 

On to Spottsylvania Court House. 

And while this scene by night was progressing with the Array of 
the Potomac, another scene, of interest to the plot of the narra- 
tive to ensue, was transpiring at a point that would soon fall 
directly in the line of march of the advancing army. 

A hill pantalooned by trees and its access obstructed by dense 
undergrowth ; its top like a bald knob of stone-strewn turf. 

At the ascending verge where the woody growth seemed to end 
gs by the sudden sweep of some colossal scythe, a denser copse, 


BURNT POWDER. 


I 

with taller trees, marked the presence of a gushing spring. At 
one side of this spring, as if hurled there by some bursted me- 
teorite of the skies, a jagged and massive rock. 

On top of this rock, in a cup worn there by nature, burned a 
weird fire — weird and faint, like the dull orb of Saturn shining in 
the damp haze of an autumn night. 

Beside the beacon a figure whose aspect in the unearthly halo 
was one of both astounding and terrifying mold. 

Tall as a giant was he — his form straight as ever nature fashioned 
the human frame. 

At first glance his age would have seemed to be fully eighty 
years ; but the erect body, the keen and terribly brilliant eyes, in- 
dicated that he was a man yet in the prime of life. 

His garb was a patchwork of rags. 

Below the tatters of sleeves that reached no further than the 
elbows, were brawny arms of powerful muscle ; below the rent 
breeches that came no further than his knees, were limbs that 
seemed molded in sinews of iron. Down from his bronzed face 
streamed a mass of white and tangled hair, like a bushy ripple of 
snow, and on his head were sparse white looks, though long, stream- 
ing backward from a high forehead. 

Around his waist he wore a broad leather belt, on the brass 
buckle-plate of which were the letters, “ C. S. A.,” and protrud- 
ing from the upper rim of the belt were several pistols and knives, 
the latter without sheaths. 

Thus plentifully armed, and wild of mein as he was, he present- 
ed a picture that would awe, if not frighten, the beholder. 

From his point of observation he could see the guide fires of the 
approaching army over the tree tops, beyond the woods and 
clearings, and anon he would shade his unearthly, sparkling eyes 
with one of his huge hands, as if to pierce the gloom and see the 
moving mass that flitted, glided, turned like gigantic snakes afar 
off. 

“They are coming,” he muttered, in a strange voice. “Curse 
them all— the blue and the gray. Why could I not be left alone 
where I have fled to escape mankind ? I hate them. All are my 
enemies. They have intruded on me here, in the one quiet spot I 
had selected in the great earth to call my own ; and oh ! but I have 
made them pay ! Tolls of blood— tolls of blood are mine to gather! 
I hate and I can kill ! I will not be driven out by either, without 
exacting my pay— pay of blood. Ay, curse them ! Oh, that I 
could call down on them the fury of the tempest, the bolt of quick 
lightning, the quake of thunders to rive the earth beneath and 
swallow them all— all!” and in a moment of transient frenzy the 
wild being raised and shook his half bare arms aloft at the skies, 
grinding together his teeth that seemed to be like the teeth of a 
dog, strong and fangy. 

While he had stood there absorbed with trying to see the army 


BURNT POWDER. 5 

afar whose lights were so plainly visible, another form was on the 
bald knob of that eminence, unknown to the strange creature. 

A man had appeared on the verge of the fringing trees, as if 
making his way toward some point beyohd. 

The suit of gray told that he was a Confederate ; and we, who 
are supposed to know each inner motif of the recital yet to come, 
may say that this second personage on the hill was one of Ander- 
son’s corps— the corps instructed by Lee to be ready for moving in 
the morning to intercept Grant; but which, because of a combi- 
nation of circumstances, had not waited till morning, being then 
on the way to"Spottsylvania Court House. 

His uniform betokened the rank of an officer, a captain of the 
gray clad host. 

Outside the moving corps of Anderson, he with a company was 
performing the duty of movable or scouting pickets, and by a 
chance observing this singularly located fire, had himself toiled up 
the short ascent to ascertain its meaning. 

The position of the Confederate captain, as he came to the top of 
the hill, was at the rear of the tall and white-haired giant in 
rags. 

He paused, staring in some astonishment at the vision, and from 
under a bushy beard ejaculated : 

“Guns of fire, what’s that?” 

The giant at that instant appeared to make a discovery. 

Quickly fi om his broad belt he snatched and cocked a monstrous 
revolver. 

For a few seconds he paused to listen. 

He slowly raised the weapon, bringing it to an aim upon a spot 
some distance below him. 

Then another pause, as if he hesitated to fire. 

“ Ho !” aspirated from the hairy lips of the watching captain, 
“ whoever the lunatic may be, 1 see that be is about to send a bul- 
let down there where I left my men. Flay me ! but I would like to 
capture this fellow, to find out who or what he is.” 

With the resolution to accomplish this, he sprung, soft-footed 
and rapidly, forward. 

At the same time the strange being seemed to have settled in his 
mind where he wished to send the bullet from his heavy revolver, 
and already his finger was pressing the trigger, when he was 
startled by a rough hand on his arm and a gruff voice, that said, in 
a loud tone : 

“Hello! guns and fire, who the deuce are you, anyhow — 
crazy?” 

The other turned — turned with a low, angry cry, and thrusting 
the weapon into the face of the one who had intruded upon his 
intention to fire into the suspicious spot below. 

The weapon exploded. 


6 


BURNT POWDER. 


The bullet went wide of its mark in the grasp that was dextrous- 
ly transferred to his wrist. 

The next instant the Confederate captain had his hands full in a 
manner that he had evidently not calculate^ on. 

The limbs with muscles of iron planted hard on the pebbly turf; 
the arms with sinews of steel gripped around the captain’s waist, 
pinioning his own arms tightly to his side, and treating him to a 
hug that was like the embrace of some enormous bear; and then 
he was lifted bodily and hurled to one side, rolling, sprawling, 
squirming, with his senses nearly knocked out by a painful twist 
of the neck. 

Spryly regaining his feet, and mad with rage, he drew his 
sword and sprung back to the spot that his whirling brain could 
not but confusedly locate. 

“ Flay me! but I’ll have your life for that, you dog — whoever you 
are !” he howled. 

But he stood alone. 

His antagonist of the minute before had disappeared. 

While he stood, with whirling faculties and cursing the one who 
had so summarily disposed of him, there was a tramp of approach- 
ing feet to one side. 

Presently he was joined by three soldiers of his company, who 
came forward on a run, as if they had witnessed the singular en- 
counter and were hastening to the assistance of their captain. 


* CHAPTER II. 

AN INVISIBLE ASSASSIN. 

Captain Sam Sparl was a man of fierce, and at times brutal dis- 
position. His men feared him. 

As he stood there, after the strange Hercules had so completely 
worsted him, his head was ringing, his visicq was swimming with 
stars, though he had made the almost mechanical effort which we 
have seen, to return for combat with the mysterious dweller of 
the hills. 

One of those men who, with all their brutish ways, are not lack- 
ing in a certain degree of bulldog daring 

Upon the heads of his followers now fell the brunt of his rage- 
rage that was aroused by the clinging pains in his jarred, red 
frame. 

“Ho, there!” he snarled, chokingly hoarse, as if the thump of 
his body on the ground had filled his throat with a strangle of 
blood. “You tardy whelps! why did you not come sooner? 
Where have you been lurking? Did you not see that fellow— big 
as a mountain, strong as an ox, crazy as a scalded ant?” 

“ We saw him, captain.” 

“ Oh, you did?” with a spiteful snap. 

“ Yes, and hurried all we could — »” 


BURNT POWDER. 


4 


“ All you could ! And that was in time to be of no service. Why 
did you not lire upon him ? Why not blow the top of his head off 
as soon as you saw me go down ? Fury and fire ! my head is as big 
as a keg! Iam bruised to my heels! Why did 3 ou not riddle 
him, I say ?” 

“ Why, cap, you yourself said that the first man who fired a gun 
to betray that we were moving about in the hills, you would mow 
him down with your sword.” 

“ So I did,” he gnashed. “A 11 the same, I wish you haddisre- 
garded the order and brought down a hundred Yankee skirmish- 
ers sooner than let that wild bug go scot free after banging me 
over the ground as he did.” 

But for the order the men would have certainly fired upon 
the wild-looking being who had so easily overcame the cap- 
tain. 

Sparl had to be somewhat mollified by this reminder; never- 
theless he continued to fume while brushing the dirt from his uni- 
form : 

“ I would give much to know who the ’cursed vagabond can be. 
And if ever I meet him again — fire and guns!— I’ll spit him on my 
sword without asking him any questions.” 

A moment later he said : 

“ Come, we will continue on the errand we started upon.” 
Sheathing his sword with a savage push, he wheeled from the 
spot, followed by his men. 

When his back was turned, they exchanged sly winks. For, to 
tell the truth, the recent singular encounter had afforded them 
some amusement. 

As they moved downward and toward the fringe of woods, a 
pair of brilliant, wolf-like eyes were watching them from a thick 
bush at the opposite side, and a bonzed hand was parting the 
branches of the bush to afford a more unobstructed view for the 
spying orbs. 

Not far, apparently, had the mysterious personage gone after 
hurling Captain Sparl to the ground. 

Now, when he noted their departing movement, he skulked like 
some specter, that was a part of the dense shadows around, away 
by a circuitous path amid the tangle that would presently bring 
him near the point where he judged they must pass. 

“ Can any one of you imagine who that lunatic was ?” demanded 
the captain, as they entered the nearly impenetrable gloom of the 
trees. 

“Oh, I can do that, cap,” said one, with a familiarity that 
showed the terms on which he permitted his men to be. 

“Who, then, is he?” 

“ As to just who, I nor anybody else can’t say.’* 

“Ha! you are trifling with me ” 

“No, cap, on honor.” 


8 


fcURNT POWDEU. 


“ What do you mean, then ?” 

“ Nobody knows just who the madman is.” 

“ He is a madman ?” 

“ Well, I reckon. He’s been livin’ in these hills hereabout for a 
great many years. Folks call him the hermit of the hills.” 

“Hermit of the hills. Good. I’ll run him through if ever I 
again have an opportunity at this hermit of the hills. Yes !” 

With which dire promise for the future, the Confederate captair 
strode onward. 

They were pursuing a western course toward Glady Run. 

A short distance and they came upon a soldier in gray who could 
not be seen, but who called out that ominous challenge which will 
halt the bravest man : 

“Who comes ?” 

“ I,” answered Sparl. “ Fall in. We are going further west.” 

The picket obeyed, dropping to the rear. 

As he did so there was a strange sound. A sound like the half 
smothered cry of a man in deep distress, and following this, a 
falling body. 

“ What’s that?” demanded Sparl, coming to a stop and turning 

“ Don’t know, cap. Somethin’s happened back there,” responded 
one of the men, in a tone of partial awe. 

Scraping together some dry leaves with his boot, and producing 
a lucifer, the captain stooped and presently had a faint fire dully 
illuminating their surroundings. 

By the flame he scanned the faces of those who were gathered 
around him. 

His bloodshot eyes made a quick discovery. 

Counting the one who had within the minute joined them, there 
should have been four besides himself. 

But he saw only three. 

It had often been remarked that Captain Sparl knew every man 
in his company by name. 

“Where’s Dickerson?” he demanded, sharply. 

No one answered, and the others glanced uneasily around, as if 
something in the air suggested the presence of a calamity. 

“Take the back track,” he continued, without a pause. “And 
stand out of the light”— throwing more leaves onto the burning 
pile — “ so that we can see. 1 want no skulking to-night.” 

Two of the men started to obey. 

They had not gone the distance of ten steps ere they stumbled 
over something laying stretched and prone across the path. 

“Here he is, cap.” 

The tone of the words might have given the Confederate cap- 
tain a hint that all was not right with the man named Dickerson. 
But he called : 

“ Ho, there, Dickerson ! what are you up to ? Come forward.” 

“ He’ll never come, cap.” 


BURNT POWDER. 


9 


“ What’s the matter with him ?” 

“ He’s dead.” 

“Fire and fury! no!” 

“ Yes, he is. Come and see for yourself.” 

Sparl hastened back to where the three were now standing over 
the motionless body in the path. 

Producing another match, he bent and roughly turned over the 
head of the prostrate man for a view of his face. 

It was the face of a dead man. 

Around the neck there was oozing a stream of blood from a 
frightful gash that had nearly severed the head from the spinal 
column. A single stroke from a practiced hand that meant death 
almost instantaneously. 

For a few seconds there was silence. 

Again the soldiers cast uneasy glances around. 

Probably they were as brave under ordinary circumstances as 
the brute-browed captain who led them ; but this sudden and 
stealthy stroke of death in their midst, without any warning 
whatever, appalled them. 

“ Satan ! I know who has done this l” burst from Sparl. 

They spoke as one man : 

“ The hermit of the hills ! ” 

At this juncture the match spluttered out, and the last flicker of 
the loose fire of the leaves faded. 

An involuntary shiver thrilled up the back of the Confederate 
captain, and hastily arising, he said, huskily : 

“ Come, be out of this, or another one of us will go down. Who- 
ever this hermit of the hills may be, he wars upon the gray and 
the blue alike.” 

“ How do you know that, cap ?” 

“ Because, when I attacked him— instead of running him 
through the back as I could and should have done— I saw a belt 
around his waist with the Southern symbol on it. My hot curse 
on the hermit of the hills !” 

“So say we all of us,” chimed the rest. 

“ And if I can ever meet him again, I shall blow a hole through 
his carcass, mind that, added the captain, who was not back- 
ward in the general movement to escape from the vicinity of 
the silent and terrible tragedy. 

If the blow of death had indeed been dealt by the person known 
as the hermit of the hills, he was a very wonder in woodcraft ; for 
there had been not the slightest sound to betray his presence near 
the four Confederates. 

The unfortunate Dickerson was left lying where be fell beneath 
the assassin’s knife. 

“ Forward !” ordered Sparl, striding to the front, while he kept 
one hand on a revolver, and strained his eyes first this way and 


10 


BURNT POWDER. 


then that, as if in momentary expectation of another attack from 
the invincible and deadly foe. 


CHAPTER III. 

THE PHANTOM FACE. 

In a broad clearing near and opposite to where Glady Run 
empties into the Po river, stood, at the date of our story, a com- 
modious dwelling, the residence of Jacob Evelyn. 

Stood then, we say, for at the time of the great conflict which 
forms an adjunct to the events about to be described, it was swept 
away by the storm of the battling hosts. 

Jacob was a man of considerable wealth at the breaking out of 
the war, and had retired to this secluded home, where he had 
hoped that the tramp and devastation of soldiery would not dis- 
turb him and his little family, and that he might be permitted to 
pass his declining years in peace. 

There were only himself and Mrs. Evelyn, and Ida, their only 
child— the latter a young lady at the verge of her majority. 

The three had lived contentedly together in this almost isolated 
spot, surrounded by the spicy grove and the blooming garden, 
with the sparkling water of the stream making innocent music on 
the airs as yet unpolluted by the din of guns. 

A very beautiful maiden was Ida; often had old Jacob remarked 
to his wife that he almost feared it was wrong to place so rare a 
pearl in the wilderness of seclusion. 

But Martha Evelyn saw therein an assured safety for the 
precious child she had reared with jealous care ; and Ida herself 
was ever bright, ever glowing with health and the color of a mind 
at ease with her lot, if not expressedly happy in it. 

But now the clouds were coming. 

Not many miles distant, and for days, had boomed the guns that 
told of carnage in the direction of the Rapidan ; not many hours 
away might be the moment when they would be in the midst of 
the contending armies— for old Jacob had kept himself posted as 
best he could regarding the aspect of affairs; and when he, with 
everyone, knew that Ulysses, the “hammerer,” was leading the 
great army of the Potomac against Lee at the Rapidan, he had 
shaken his aged head sagely and said : 

“Now we may see a campaign, the like of which has not yet 
gone into history, for all that can combine to make war bloody 
and terrible. Let Robert E. Lee beware of the foe who comes to 
meet him this time. Would that we had gone away from this 
country entirely, Martha, for it may be that ere the month is past 
we will be homeless.” 

“Homeless?” rejoined Martha Evelyn, questioningly. “Why, 
cannot we still go if they batter down the house? It is easy to seek 
some other haven, I think, when one has plenty of money.” 


fiURNT POWDER. 


11 


Old Jacob winced at this, but she did not observe it. 

“ Yes,” he said, in a strained composure, “easy enough.” While, 
In his own mind, he added : “ If she only knew— if she only knew.” 

At every conversation upon the subject of war, Ida’s cheeks 
would color more deeply than was their wont. 

“I love heroes,” she had her say, simply. 

To which no particular attention was paid. 

But deep in the young girl’s heart there was an additional voice 
that added : “ Yes, I love heroes— and one hero best of all !” 

Jacob Evelyn had been able so far to avoid mixing in the ele- 
ment of opinions. To all who knew him from the first of the peri- 
od of strife he had appeared to be purely of a neiltral mind— this 
permissible even in those excited times, because of his extreme 
age, for Jacob was seventy years old then, and past the mixing 
with opposing factions. 

This, and a careful guard upon his language, accounted for his 
being where we find him on the eve of the shock that was soon to 
occur at Spottsylvania Court House. 

At the moment, we turn to the home of the Evelyns, father, 
mother and daughter were seated in the great square parlor, and 
a look of anxiety was in the faces of all. 

“ I fear one man on all the earth more than the combined armies 
of the North and South,” Jacob was thinking. “ I have thought 
that, after all these years, I may have thrown him from my trail; 
but sometimes there come dreams that he is still hard and merci- 
less on my track to have revenge, to kill perhaps ; and the God in 
Heaven alone knows my innocence of the crime which he laid at 
my door when Ida was but a babe.” 

In the mind of Martha Evelyn : 

“ Why need I worry ? I know that my husband has plenty of 
money — not all in the South ; so that if the South does not win, as 
I am sure it must, we can very early seek another home where 
there is no fighting.” 

By which train of thought it may be inferr d that Mrs. Evelyn 
was of decided Southern proclivities. 

Ida, too, was having some thoughts as they sat silently there. 

‘ I know that the dear one I have not seen since I left the acade- A 
my at the North, oh, so many years ago, it seems, is now some- 
where near me. For to-day I found on the bench of the arbor the 
topaz ring I gave him at our parting. The country was breaking 
out with this terrible war then, and Heaven alone knew whether 
Norman McLean and I should ever meet again. When I gave him 
the ring he said : ‘ I will wear this constantly, Ida, and if ever the 
opportunity arrives when I may see you in your Southern home, 
and if it can only be done through dangers, you may know that I 
am near by finding this ring. I will flud means for placing it 
where you cannot fail to get it.* To-day I found it in the arbor. I 
know that Norman McLean, the may I have loved faithfully for 


12 


BURNT POWDER. 


years, is somewhere near, and that he will see me. What would 
father and mother say if they knew that I had promised, ay, that 
I had left my heart with Norman McLean when they summoned 
me home from the academy ? Ah, I long to meet him again.” 

Even while these thoughts were passing within the secret re- 
cesses of her brain, and as if she momentarily expected to see her 
lover enter the room, her alert senses caught a sound on the out- 
side. 

A noise as if some one was climbing up to get a glance in at the 
closed window near which she was seated. 

“It is Norman McLean,” she murmured, mentally. “He is 
here. He wishes me to get a glimpse of him, oh, blessed glimpse ! I 
think I see hands outside on the sill. He knows not whether it 
would be safe for him to boldly come in. Mother’s Southern 
blood would, perhaps, rise to such resentment at his presence, for 
she so openly despises all Northerners that she might drive him 
instantly from the house. It is, perhaps, wise on his part to first 
catch my eyes and judge thereby whether he shall come inside. I 
must warn him by a glance that it would be best for him not to 
do so. And with this paper and pencil I can write large enough 
for him to read through the pane that I will meet him in the ar- 
bor within an hour. 

She reached to a table that was near and took from it a pencil 
and slip of paper, with which she began slowly to write in large 
characters the message intended for the lover she believed to be 
then at the window. 

While doing this her expectant eyes could not keep steadfast on 
the paper ; they roamed covertly toward the panes where each 
second she anticipated the appearance of a dear face. 

Then suddenly the paper and pencil dropped from her grasp, a 
look of horror settled on her beautiful features, and for a mo- 
ment it seemed as if her whole frame was paralyzed by an over- 
powering sight. 

Slowly, phantom-like, above the sill arose a visage of affrighting 
mold. 

A head with hoary and sparse locks ; beneath the hair of the 
iiead more hair of flowing whiteness, and in the depths of the hair 
of head and face two small, brilliant, piercing eyes that sparkled 
with a maniacal flame. 

Close to the panes pressed the startling vision, until the breast of 
the gazer rose above the sill, partly exposed by the wide-rent shirt 
of tattered cloth, and over the face spread a grin so hideous that 
the transfixed girl at last found voice to cry : 

“Father! father! Look— look there!” 

The sound of her voice appeared to bring back the strength that 
had fled from her limbs, and at a bound she escaped from the chair 
near the window, running half the length of the room. 

“What is it, Ida?” 


BURNT POWDER. l3 

“ What ails you, iny child?” anxiously asked both parents in a 
breath. 

But again her voice failed. She could only raise one of the 
half bare arms of superb beauty and level an unsteady hand to- 
ward the window. 

As she did so, and as the eyes of Jacob Evelyn followed the di- 
rection, another cry filled the room, this time from the lips of the 
old gentleman, who staggered from his chair, clapping one hand to 
his brow as if stricken a blow. 

“It is he! He has come at last ! I am doomed!” 

The remarkable words astounded mother and child. 

Instantly their mutual dread of the strangely horrible visage 
that glanced in upon them was forgotten in a nameless solicitude. 
For the words showed that Jacob Evelyn must know— know and 
fear, from some unaccountable cause — the owner of the spectral 
and terrifying face. 

They hastened to his side, for he seemed about to fall. 

The sight of the mysterious effect upon her father ennerved the 
girl, and as she twined her arms supportingly around him, she 
questioned : 

“ Who is it ? What is it ? Speak, father. Why are you so affected 
by that man — that man with a demon’s countenance?” 


CHAPTER IV. 

THE RIVAL CAPTAINS. 

The face which had appeared at the window was that of the 
weird beacon builder, the hermit of the hills. 

Upon Jacob Evelyn the effect of the vision was most aston- 
ishing. 

Martha Evelyn’s voice was full of mingled surprise and anxiety, 
as she asked : 

“ Whatever is the matter, dear Jacob ? Do tell us.” 

But only a groan came from the lips of the strangely trembling 
man. 

Ereeing himself from his daughter’s embrace, he sunk back 
again into the large easy chair and sat with closed eyes, his face 
pallid as the dead. 

Ida glanced toward the window. The wraith-like image there 
had vanished. 

And as she noted this, all heard a sound without that told of the 
passing or arriving of mounted soldiery. 

“Some one is coming here,” the old gentleman said, opening his 
eyes, and gazing up at his wife and child with a dull, desperate 
etare. 

The two directed their attention to the high and broad door 
which opened into the hall near the front entrance. 

A moment later the thud of horsehoofs ceased ; there was a 


14 


BURNT POWDER. 


jangle of scabbards on the little lawn before the house, and pres- 
ently a heavy footstep on the wide porch. 

The Evelyns were without servants then. 

The attendants they had had were slaves bought and promptly 
freed after purchase; notwithstanding which, the prospect of 
liberty in wider and long wondrously hidden parts of the north- 
ern country, had finally lured them away from a home where they 
had invariably known an indulgent kindness. 

Whoever the party was that now crossed the porch of the Eve- 
lyn mansion, it must have been known that a summons at the 
door could only be answered by some member of the family, for 
without even a knock, the massive door was thrown open and the 
comer advanced along the hall with saber clanking on the glossily 
waxed flooring. 

Into the room stalked a man wearing a dashing suit of Confed- 
erate cavalry gray, surmounted by epaulettes, and on his head a 
hat of the same color, having a monstrously broad brim. 

Beneath his hat were a pair of glaring bright eyes, and from his 
chin a goatee that touched low on the shining buttons of his coat. 

Ida bowed coldly and half averted her head, while she thought: 

“ Ah ! it is Captain Killbrag. Am I never to see the last of him 
—the one whose importunities for my hand in marriage have at 
last assumed the fashion of a nightmare to my soul ? It is very 
wicked, I know, but I have caught myself wishing, time and 
again, that he might be slain by the bullets of the Yankees he 
hates so fiercely.” 

At seeing who the comer was, Jacob seemed somewhat relieved; 
for at first, whepjie heard the approaching step, he had moaned 
inwardly • 

‘‘He has come — the trailer who swore to have revenge! Iam a 
doomed man the instant I stand face to face with Callis Grim- 
shaw ! Fend me, Heaven ! for I am innocent— I am innocent !” 

Mrs. Evelyn appeared not to be the least disconcerted by the ar- 
rival of the Confederate cavalry captain, who had paused op the 
threshold, staring inward with orbs that burned searchingly. 

“ Good evening, Captain Killbrag,” she at once said,. “ Oh, we 
are glad to see you ! We have been very apprehensive; the Yan- 
kees are getting so disagreeably close, you know ” 

“Yes, I know, malediction on them!” interrupted the captain, 
in a grating voice. “ Too close for their own good— tor anybody’s 
good. But I did not come here to talk about the Yankees being 
close ; I came to say that if you want to save your lives you had 
best get out of this quiokly. Prepare yourselves, and come with 
me.” 

A few words more, in which he impressed them with the idea 
that within the hour their house would be shot into splinters, 
caused Martha Evelyn to say : 

“ Come, Ida, comej let us hasten up stairs andgeton some strong 


BURNT POWDER. 


15 


clothing. I verily believe that we will be fugitives. How terrible 
for people who ought to have comfort alone with so much money 
as we have. Come, my child.” 

“Hasten, then. And while you are gone about it, 1 will speak 
with Mr. Evelyn. I have something important to say. Ho, very ! 
Your ear, Mr. Evelyn.” 

Captain Killbrag helped himself to a chair, and sat down beside 
Jacob. 

“ I wish to say,” he opened, in a harshly brisk way, “ that your 
daughter, the beautiful Ida, had better reconsider her refusal of 
my offer of marriage. These are stirring and perilous times for a 
young girl to be without an able protector. You are getting old — 
you are already old, Jacob ; you are too feeble a man to insure the 
safetyof your daughter. I am a strong man— strong as a dozen or 
so tigers contrasted with you. Before we leave the house tell Miss 
Ida that we are to be married by the first army chaplain we may 
meet. She will have a protector then worth admiration. Yes ; by 
the dragon of George! yes.” 

Evelyn seemed to be in a state of partial apathy. 

The secret something, which weighed upon him at and from the 
moment of seeing the terrible countenance at the window, was 
upon him still. 

Without meeting the captain’s gaze, he answered: 

“I have done all that I could to persuade Ida to the match. I 
cannot force the child. She is now at the age of womanhood ; she 
is her own mistress ” 

“ Malediction!” burst interruptingly from the captain’s lips. 

But it was not caused by the hesitating reply of Jacob. 

Ere more could pass between this glaring-eyed suitor for the 
beautiful girl’s hand and the aged father, another comer was upon 
the scene. 

The bearded face of Captain Sam Sparl appeared in the 
doorway, in a manner showing that he had entered by a rear in- 
gress. 

His bloodshot orbs were glowering upon them, and his evil brow 
was knit in a cloud. 

“You are about to make a fiue bargain here !” he exclaimed, at 
the instant of their beholding him. “ Ho ! a fine bargain, I swear. 
But I have something to say about that.” 

‘‘Who are you, now?” demanded Killbrag, starting to his feet 
and frowning upon the intruder. 

“ Who am I ? Sam Sparl. What am I ? Look at my epaulettes. 
I am as big a frog in the ditch as yourself. You are after the an- 
gelic Ida Evelyn— so am I ” 

At this speech, and before another word could be uttered by 
Sparl, the cavalry captain vented an oath and laid his hand on his 
saber hilt. 


16 BURNT POWDER. 

The movement was imitated by Sparl, who gnashed, at the same 
time: 

“ Drive ahead, there ! I am ready for you. Look !” 

He made a motion, and out from the shadows of the hall stepped 
his three followers with leveled guns. 

“Flame and fury !” he added. “I am here just in time to pre- 
vent your running off with the angelic Ida. She is for me. I told 
Jacob Evelyn, two years ago, that I would yet wed with his 
daughter; I am here to fulfill that delightful promise. Out with 
you! Begone ! or I shall order my men to fill your carcass full of 
bullet holes!” 

Evidently, having entered the house by the rear, and at some 
moments after the arrival of Captain Killbrag, Sparl was not 
aware the former had a detachment of cavalry at the front and 
within call of his voice. 

This was apparent to Killbrag, and while he smarted under the 
other’s words, a devilish smile curled up his goatee on his chin 
until it stuck straight outward. 

Throughout, Jacob had maintained silence. 

He knew that both these fiery Confederate leaders were resolved 
to wed with his daughter; both were objects of detestation in his 
eyes. 

But surrounded as he was by an element which even then in- 
clined to believe him a Northern sympathizer, he discerned that 
either of Ida’s savage and abhorred suitors might make immense 
trouble for him. 

A crisis was now pending in the great, square parlor. 

In his mind Jacob was saying. 

“ I wish that these two fire-eaters would spill each other’s blood 
in mortal combat! If both should be killed, Ida would be merci- 
fully relieved of a pair of rogues who think that I do not know 
their true characters. Let them fight if they will.” 

“I— I am to be the husband of beautiful Ida Evelyn,” said Kill- 
brag, intensely. 

“Not you — but I !” retorted Sparl. “It is for that I am here to- 
night.” 

“It is for that I am here to-night.” 

“ Guns and fire ! we’ll see who will get her ” 

“ We’ll see ” 

“ Give it to him! Fire!” 

And promptly, as Sparl ground out this order to his men, the 
three muskets banged with a deafening report in the room. 

put Killbrag was not idle. 

As the word to fire was leaving the bearded lips of this sudden 
rival in his path, he stooped with a lightning jerk, and the slugs 
tore through the air above his head harmlessly. 

One of the slugs struck the tall lamp on the table. 


BURNT POWDER. 


IT 


CHAPTER V. 

AGAIN THE UNSEEN STRIKES. 

Darkness ensued. 

Not total darkness, for as the lamp went out, shivered to atoms, 
a dull glare was visible through the windows, like the reflection 
from a distant fire. 

This light was occasioned by the burning woods of the far off 
Wilderness. 

And it was owing to this blazing stretch of woodland, which ren- 
dered it impossible for the Confederate commander, Anderson, to 
find a suitable bivouac, that the troops were moving toward Spott- 
sylvania Court House by night, instead of waiting for further 
orders in the morning, as Lee had instructed. 

Dull though the reflection, there was light enough in the spacious 
apartment to show the Mississippian, Sam Sparl, that his rival 
had escaped death by the discharged muskets. 

“ Flames of earth !” he roared, making a dash forward, with 
drawn sword. 

“ Malediction!” gritted back the cavalryman, sweeping hissaber 
aloft in a gleaming streak. 

Then there was a glitter and clash of steel in the air, as the two 
came together in combat. 

Simultaneously there rung forth a shriek from women’s lips, 
and following the shriek a shout from th'e outside that told the 
troopers of Killbrag had heard the reports of the muskets and 
were hastening toward the house to ascertain the meaning of the 
unexpected disturbance. 

Ere ten could have been counted, the room was filled with the 
troopers in gray — filled, too, with*a torrent of oaths that poured 
from Captain Killbrag. 

He was just arising from the floor as his men came running in. 
The sword of Sparl had been superior to the heavy saber of his an- 
tagonist. At one scientific twist, he had disarmed Killbrag, at an- 
other, delivered unintentionally with the flat of the blade, he had 
laid his rival sprawling. * 

But Sparl heard and well knew the meaning of the shouts and 
tramping feet outside. 

“ Ho!” he growled. ‘‘This fellow has armed assistance close. 
Perhaps too many for me. But I think I have killed the dog who 
aspires to the hand of the woman I have sworn shall be mine. Let 
him lay and rot, and let me get out of this. Follow me!” to his 
men, as he made a dash for the rear door, by which they had en- 
tered. 

44 Malediction !” half howled Killbrag, as he regained his feet. 
“ Make a light here, quickly. After that hound who calls himself 
a captain; who is, I now recall, a captain with Barksdale’s bri- 


18 


BURNT POWDER. 


gade. Capture him. Flay him! Shoot him on the spot, and make 
a light, I say!” 

Another lamp was found, and when lighted it showed that in 
the easy chair now sat— a corpse. 

One of the slugs that sped at the order of Sparl had pierced the 
brain of Jacob Evelyn. 

The old man had died with the weight of a secret— a guilty se- 
cret, perhaps— on his soul. 

Killbrag paid little heed to the dead owner of the house. 

With quick commands he dispatched some of his men to scour 
the premises. 

Grasping up the lamp, he rushed from the room and ascended 
the stairs. 

“Ho! by the dragon of George!” he muttered, as his heavy 
boots thumped on the staircase. “ Now, then, I think I shall have 
things all my own way. Old Jacob Evelyn is dead ; his wife and 
child had better accept of the protection I can offer them. His 
wife— bah! It is the beautiful Ida that I want. Ida, and the 
wealth it is rumored that old Jacob has hidden somewhere in the 
North. I wonder if the beautiful Ida knows just where her father’s 
money is ? But where can she be ?” as he looked hurriedly first in 
one room and then another on the upper floor. 

The young girl was not there. 

A continued search revealed that she must have fled from the 
building altogether. 

Prone at the threshold of the rear entrance, when he descended 
in a fury, Killbrag found Mrs. Evelyn insensible. 

“What’s this?” he snarled, bending over her with the waving 
lamp. “ Ho ! the old lady in a swoon. Hello, madam ? maledic- 
tion ! Are you dead, or alive, or what?” 

The sound of the harsh voice above her seemed to revive the un- 
conscious lady. 

She opened her eyes, and as she looked up at him in a dazed, 
frightened way, she wailed : 

“ My child — Ida ! Oh, where is my child? ” 

“ By the barred flag ! that is the very thing I want to know!” 
blurted Killbrag, his burning eyes fixed upon her like two wolfish 
orbs. 

“ Oh, did you not see her?” 

“No ” 

“She Is gone, then.” 

“Malediction ! 3he has run away from me, eh ?” 

“No, no ; she was taken bodily. Did you not bear our shrieks? 
A man, a shape of horror, was in the room above. We tried to 
flee, but he sprung upon us like a very tiger, and taking Ida in his 
arms, bounded down the stairway. Find her— bring her back to 
me, I implore you, Captain Killbrag ” 


BURNT POWDER. 19 

The captain had wheeled before she finished. Back to the front 
of the building he strode, almost running. 

He believed that the one who carried off Ida Evelyn — if any one 
had carried her off, as Mrs. Evelyn said— must be his rival, the 
Mississippian of Barksdale’s brigade. 

He knew that that brigade was moving to Spottsylvania Court 
House ahead of Anderson and McLaws. 

Rejoining his troopers, he cried : 

“ Scatter ! Search again if you have not found a man wearing a 
gray uniform, who may call himself Captain Sparl, of Barksdale’s 
brigade. Down him the moment you see him ! Kill him— those 
are my orders ! He has a woman in his arms, though, so be care- 
ful that you do not shoot her. Search— search !” 

Several were then beating about the undergrowth at the verge 
of the lawn; nearly the whole of the remaining detachment now 
started briskly to join the search. 

But nothing could be found of Sparl or his subordinates, nor 
coulu anything be seen of a female in the trees surrounding the 
dwelling, though the hunt was prosecuted far into the timber. 

Though nearly every foot of ground around the mansion was 
tramped over by the troopers, they railed to discover an item that 
might have given them a clue— this item the face of a man that 
was pressed to the few bars of a narrow, horizontal window at the 
base of the building, and which was a ventilator to the cellar. 

The white-haired face of the hermit of the hills. 

Deep in the shadow of the building, the window itself was hardly 
to be seen ; the face that grinned behind the bars, however, could 
plainly mark the movements of Captain Killbrag and his striding 
cavalrymen. 

The troopers now were all verging toward the back of the man- 
sion. Only two guards remained with the horses. 

Suddenly these two felt themselves seized, felt terrific blows 
falling on their sombreroed heads that sent them groaning and 
lifeless to the sward. 

“Mount! Take horses and away!” cried the voice of Captain 
Sparl, though guardedly low. “Flame and fury! we will trick 
these troopers of the rival I thought I had killed. Mount! I have 
two persons in mind now whom I will one day meet and settle an 
account with— curse them ! The lunatic hermit of the hills and this 
fellow with a saber who says the angelic Ida Evelyn is to be his 
bride. His bride! Ho! I would walk a thousand miles to smite 
off his head before he should have her ! But hurry, there.” 

The next minute the troopers were arrested by a sound of horse- 
hoofs at a gallop receding from the vicinity of the mansion. Kill- 
brag immediately divined its meaning. 

“Malediction!” he burst forth, following with an oath of sul- 
phurousdeepness. “We are outwitted. The man we seek has played 


BURNT POWDER. 


20 

the fox and stolen our horses by a double. This way! Forward- 
haste!*’ 

Leading with tremendous leaps, Killbrag made for the spot 
where the horses had been left under guard. 

He fully expected that every horse had either been stolen by his 
sly rival or stampeded. 

As they passed near to the house, something hurtled silently but 
with a bright gleam through the air. 

Those further in the rear of the excited captain half paused and 
turned their heads as a groan of agony came to their ears, and the 
glances thrown hack were just in time to see one of their comrades 
reel and fall with a heavy pitch to the earth. 

“ What’s the matter with Darby?” queried one. 

“Drunk again, I reckon.” 

“He wasn’t drunk when we stopped here a few minutes ago. 

Rapidly retracing their steps to the side of the fallen man they 
stooped over and then shook him, as he failed to respond when 
addressed. 

An astounding discovery was made. 

Protruding from the cavalryman’s neck was a huge knife that 
had pierced through sinews and arteries, clear to the hilt. 

He was in the last throes of death. Vainly he tried to articulate, ^ 
and at last, with a weak effort, pointed toward the low and narrow 
cellar window. 

CHAPTER VI. 

A SKIRMISH DINE OF BLUE. 

There were eighteen troopers with Captain Killbrag— all that re- 
mained of his company after the ordeals met by Stuart’s cavalry in 
the havoc of the Wilderness preceding this night. 

These, while the body of the cavalry were maintaining a stub- 
born resistance to the advancing Unionists on the Brock road, had 
been sent on a scout to the westward and back in the bend of the 
Po, some miles beyond Spottsylvania. 

By this late hour in the night the Confederates had learned that 
the objective was Spottsylvania, and not Fredericksburg, and al- 
ready Longstreet’s column was on the march to cover the threat- 
ened point. 

While the events we have so far described were transpiring, let 
not the reader imagine that all was hushed in those vast and 
gloomy woods which, combining with the enemy ensconced there, 
formed deadly barrier^ to the pressing host of the North. 

Afar could be heard almost continuously the crack of carbines, 
telling of the tierce conflict between the opposing cavalry of Stuart 
and Merritt. 

And afar, by the road from Parker’s store, were coming the men 
of Longstreet, weary, savage, thirsting for the fight that was not 
yet to end. 


BURNT POWDER. 21 

Thus was the point where our interest at present centers thrown 
almost directly between the mighty armies. 

Captain Killbrag soon ascertained that only four of the horses 
had been made away with, and his usual outburst of anger was at 
its height when he was checked by a cry from those who had 
paused by the body of the unfortunate Darby. 

4< Captain — captain, come here !” was the shout. 

“ Well, what is it you want? Cone on, here; mount and search 
again for that devil of a man who has helped himself to our 
horses. We’ve no time to be losing here ; the Yanks will be on us 
presently ” 

“ But somebody has killed Darby.” 

“ Killed Darby? Malediction ! what are you saying?” 

Back he strode in hot haste to the mansion. 

When he saw the corpse of one of his best men stretched in 
death, and comprehended that he had been struck down by an in- 
visible foe, again his rage broke forth, and he started up, glaring 
around as if he expected to detect the assassin among his own 
troopers. 

But before the scorching oath that was upon his lips could snarl 
out, there was an occurrence that startled all. 

Out upon the night rung such a cry as none there had ever heard 
equaled in all their lives. 

A scream like some great and unknown bird whose note was 
hoarse, loud and curdling. 

The sound came from the rear of the mansion. 

In a general impulse all ran around to see the utterer of the un- 
earthly noise. 

Against the dully red background of the distant burning woods 
could be discerned a man of herculean frame seated on a horse of 
unusual size. 

Over his saddle front, held tightly in his left arm, was a figure 
that all saw was a female. 

A way like the wind went this mysterious rider, and they saw a 
mass of hair from the hatless head streaming behind him as he 
half turned to look back at them. 

The hermit of the hills ! 

None there knew or had ever heard of him. 

But Captain Killbrag at once jumped to a conclusion. 

“ Malediction ! ” he ejaculated. “ There goes somebody whom I 
have not yet known with my beautiful Ida in his abominable 
arms. Mrs. Evelyn said it was a man with a demon’s shape who 
carried off her daughter. I see. It was not that dog of Barks- 
dale’s brigade ; it was this fellow, whoever he is. Mount! After 
them! Follow me!” 

When coming back to see what had happened to the man named 
Darby, Killbrag had led his horse along by the bridle, 

As he cried forth the order to pursue the unknown, who was 


22 


RtfRNT POWDER. 


making off with the maiden he wished to secure for a wife, he 
sprung nimbly into his saddle and dug his spurs deep into the 
snorting animal’s sides. 

Away in hot chase he went, and within a few seconds the others 
were closely following him. 

Still there was some delay, and this permitted the strange rider 
with his burden to reach a crest, beyond which was a wide and 
deep ravine. 

Wh m Killbrag and his troopers came to the verge of the ravine, 
there was neither sign nor sound of the person they pursued, and 
in a disordered mass they halted. 

While they hesitated thus, and the captain filled the air with his 
sulphurous oaths, some one cried : 

“Fire! Look at the fire !” 

A slim column of flame shot upward from the roof of the man- 
sion, and out from the windows were now noticed rolling thick 
puffs of smoke. 

A female figure ran from the burning building, screaming as she 
went, and Killbrag recognized Mrs. Evelyn. 

The voice of the old lady contained more than alarm at the loss 
she was about to sustain in the conflagration of her home ; there 
was an accent of dismay that told of an agony in her heart, for 
she had discovered the ghastly corpse of her husband in the easy 
chair. 

It must have been that the sight had deprived her of her reason 
temporarily, for, without thought of the horrible fate to the in- 
sensible body of the father of her child, when she discovered at the 
same time that the building was burning over her head, she ran 
swiftly forth to escape the flames. 

For several minutes her shrieks could be heard as she went 
further and further into the woodland toward the Po. 

Higher spurted the flames of the burning mansion. 

“By the dragon of George!” the captain exclaimed, “ I am sorry 
to see that. There is a good store of wine in the cellar, I remem- 
ber. I would liked to have seized the wine.” 

But whatever he would have liked to do, something here trans- 
pired to throw the troopers into considerable confusion. 

Crack, crack ! sounded close by. 

Zip, zip! whistled several bullets disagreeably close to their 
ears. 

The hour was then nearing daylight. Already the streaks of 
gray and crimson were creeping upward in the eastern horizon, 
and this, with the faint glimmer from the burning woods afar, 
enabled the troopers and their captain to locate whence came the 
unexpected and nearly fatal shots. 

More shots— for again broke the ominous crack ! crack ! of mus- 
kets to one side of the descent to the ravine. 

And shadowy, flitting forms could be outlined on the border of 


BURNT POWDER. 23 

the timber, stretching away in an unmistakable skirmish line that 
seemed to be advancing. 

“ The Yanks ! The Yanks !” cried several in a breath. 

“ Out of this !” ordered Killbrag, himself setting the example and 
spurring his horse back in the direction of the mansion. 

Crack ! crack ! followed tho discharge of the muskets after them, 
and the well known hurrah of the boys in blue rent the dawny air 
at seeing the precipitato retreat. 

The sound of the muskets appeared to arouse to life another 
element in those mixed clearings and woody recesses. 

As if by magic, from an opposite side of the clearing over which 
Killbrag and his men were speeding desperately, suddenly flamed 
an answering shot directed toward the skirmishers on the north. 

Ah ! the redoubtable foe of the Wilderness was promptly there; 
the Confederate skirmishers were alert and already on the spot to 
meet again the advancing Unionists. 

Seeing this support at hand, Killbrag succeeded in rallying and 
forming his men by the time they had arrived at the edge of the 
clearing. 

Then back they charged, full at the woods which contained the 
enemy, as yet invisible. 

4 ‘ Rout them out ! Cut every one of them down ! Death to the 
’cursed Yanks ! Malediction !” he yelled, in stentorian tones. 

And the yell was echoed by the Confederate line that spread and 
encouraged the charge. 

Straight at the trees and the hidden muskets within them the 
daring riders went. 

But ere they reached the length of the clearing there poured 
forth a very sheet of flame that sent death more surely this time, 
for several saddles were emptied. 

“By the dragon of George! steady here!” bellowed the bold 
cavalry leader. 

But his cry was unavailing. 

Ere the confused mass of horsemen could reform— for the fallen 
in the rank created an instant tangle— again came the volley from 
the trees, and as more of the troopers went down, Killbrag wheeled 
into the general stampede that ensued. 

But for the support of the skirmishers that happened thus to 
meet the skirmishers of the Union army, there would have been a 
bayonet charge from the boys in blue ere the retreat was under 
way, which might have put an end to the career of a character as 
yet important to the drama of our story. 

Pell-mell into the lane that led from the Evelyn mansion raced 
the flying troopers, and it was not until a considerable distance had 
been traversed that Killbrag could bring them to a stand. 


24 


BURNT POWDER. 


CHAPTER VII. 

A HORRIBLE ABDUCTOR. 

When Mrs. Evelyn and Ida ascended to the bedrooms to prepare 
for the hasty flight urged by Captain Killbrag, the former re- 
marked : 

“What a fine, soldierly looking man is Captain Killbrag, my 
child. Quite a fighter, too ; I have heard him say himself that he 
is fearless as several tigers, and would like nothing better at any 
time than to meet and combat all at once a score of these detesta- 
ble Yankees who are pouring down from the North. Do you not 
admire his soldierly bearing, Ida, my dear?’’ 

The young girl’s lip curled with the loathing she felt for the 
cavalry captain ; for she had a keener perception than her mother, 
and saw in him a man that any pure and refined woman could not 
but despise. 

A bold man, no doubt; but bold in other ways unsuited to the 
taste of a tender being like herself. 

But she well knew that the principal cause of her mother’s ad- 
miration for Killbrag was the fact of his being a muscular soldier, 
who wore the gray so dear to her heart. 

While busy with striking a light at the lamp on the mantelpiece, 
she responded : 

“I believe Captain Killbrag is a daring soldier, mother; but as 
to what he may be otherwise, I shall not venture an opinion.” 

Mrs. Evelyn came to her daughter’s side, and laid one hand on 
her arm gently, while she whispered : 

“ Do you know, Ida, he has asked your father for permission to 
pay a lover’s attentions to you?” 

Ida shuddered. 

She well knew the fact— knew, too, that her father shared a por- 
tion of her own dislike for the captain, and had even heard with a 
loyal pleasure the manner in which the bold suitor had been kept 
at a comparative distance by evasive answers to his importu- 
nities. 

“ Well?” she said, half queryingly, avoiding her mother’s earnest 
gaze as she adjusted the mellowing lamp shade over the tall 
chimney. 

“ Captain Killbrag is of an old Virginia family, my daughter, 
with whom my people were neighbors before I married and went 
North with your father. It would be an alliance of which I would 
approve. If you have not already felt anything more than com- 
monplace friendship for the dashing captain, I would like you to 
try and interest yourself in the attentions he will surely be paying 
you shortly ” 

Again the girl shuddered inwardly ; and she interrupted 

“Dear mother, is not this an inauspicious time to discuss such a 


BURNT POWDER. 


25 


subject? We are in danger here. Every minute we lose but in- 
creases our peril. Captain Killbrag has urged us to make haste. 
Hark ! What was that ?” 

Both distinctly heard loud voices below. 

Voices in which could be distinguished the exclamations : 

“ Flames of earth !” in a roar. 

“ Malediction !” in a grit of anger. 

And simultaneously a terrible crash of muskets that shook the 
floor and rattled the window panes till the glass seemed about to 
burst in fragments. 

The shots and the cries were of a suddenness and dread signifi- 
cance that startled the two beyond words. 

Transfixed for a moment, they gazed at one another in affright. 
Then in concert they turned toward the door. 

As they did this, a shriek burst from the lips of Mrs. Evelyn— 
the shriek we have mentioned as having occured almost at a blend- 
ing moment with the explosion of the muskets. 

Well might that shriek have arisen from any woman, though 
Ida’s tongue clove to the roof of her mouth, and all power of voice 
fled from her. 

For there in the doorway stood such a sight as could but cause 
their hearts to stand still in horror. 

A tall, weird figure it was— a man with snow-white beard and 
sparsely flowing locks from a bare and half bald head; his 
eyes like twinkling beads of basilisk fire fixed steadfastly upon 
them. 

Instinctively, after that single outcry from Mrs. Evelyn, mother 
and daughter clasped hands. 

To be rudely torn asunder, as the affrighting image bounded 
forward and grasped up the young girl with the swiftness of a 
monster falcon. 

Not a word was spoken ; both seemed powerless to resist the ac- 
tion of the wild-mien creature. 

But when the mother saw her child being borne in strong, rag- 
gedly-bare arms away, as though she was an infant, she found 
strength to totter forward in giddy pursuit, articulating, chok- 
ingly : 

“ My child ! Spare my child ! Whoever you are, have mercy on 
my poor child ! Oh, God ! do not rob me of her!” 

Whatever weakness was in the nature of Mrs. Evelyn, she was 
evidently wrapped up in her love for Ida. 

The sight of this repugnant and maniac-browed being thus boldly 
making away with the treasure of her heart aroused all the de- 
parted powers of her frame, and as she staggered in pursuit of the 
silent and horrible abductor, could she have laid hands upon him, 
a fierce resistance would have been hers. 

Like a grim shadow he seemed to melt before her into the dark- 
ness of the passage without. 


BURNT POWDER. 


26 

Still after him she went, now running. But as veil chase an in- 
tangible thing of air as that mysterious hermit of the hills, who 
held the pure girl in his gripe; and at last, at the rear of the lower 
hall, she uttered one despairing wail and sunk in the swoon in 
which she was shortly found by the excited and ranting Kill- 
brag. 

The maniac Hercules had a horse at the angle of the back 
building— a horse, like himself, of gigantic structure and powerful 
muscle. 

Gaining the saddle, he was about to urge the animal away, when 
an idea seemed to enter his crazy head. 

Ida had fainted at the moment of feeling the terrible gripe that 
lifted her from the floor into his arms. 

Hugging close his burden, he ran, stealthy and swift, back to 
an areaway, thence down the joisted stairs, and through the im- 
penetrable darkness of the basement to the cellar. 

Laying the young girl at his feet, he peered out at the grated 
window; and there was a low, chuckling sound issuing from the 
depths of his snowy beard as he watched the troopers just then 
moving toward their horses in obedience to the command of Kill- 
brag. 

“ Blood, blood !” was his hoarsely savage whisper. “ I will have 
blood, blood!, that I swore should flow, long years ago, when the 
world planted its dagger in my heart and laughed at my misery. 
The blue and the gray— oho ! what care I who wears them, so 
that they are human whom I may strike ! For blood I have lived 
—ha, ha, ha! they did not kill me with their jibes; and at last, at 
last, I have found the arch wretch of them all. Soon I shall strike 
him — even deeper than he struck me years ago; but I must have 
more blood, first. My cup of vengeance upon the world is not yet 
full. And it must be brim, brim over. Ha!” 

At the last aspirated breath, one hand dropped quickly to his 
belt of knives. 

He snatched a gleaming blade and took it by the point, poising it 
behind and sideways over his shoulder. 

Only for a second was the weapon held thus; then, with the 
speed and trueness of a bolting arrow, he hurled it from the nar- 
row space of the grated window. 

It was a side throw, under awkward opportunity; but practice 
had given a wonderful accuracy to the brawny arm, and the steel 
shaft hurtled forward on its mission of death with a faintly whirr- 
ing sound. 

True to the mark it went. 

The next instant the trooper, Darby, sunk to the earth as we 
have seen. 

“ Blood, blood !” jabbered the maniac assassin. “ Another soul 
has gone out of the world. Ha, ha !” 

Again taking up the unconscious form of Ida Evelyn, he re- 


BURNT POWDER. 27 

traced his way from the cellar, aud was soon in the saddle on his 
gigantic horse. 

Then he sent forth that shrill, curdling cry which drew the at- 
tention of the troopers to the rear, and gave his beast the rein, 
digging the heels of his battered shoes into the animal’s sides at 
every leap. 

On sped the madman, casting backward glances to see if he was 
followed. 

Another cry he sent back to the prompt pursuers— a cry of 
hatred and defiance. 

Into the little ravine he plunged with seeming recklessness. 

But well he knew every foot of ground in that vicinity, for at 
once he guided his horse, though slower, into a narrow bridle path 
that slanted downward into the ravine, and by the time Killbrag 
and his men had reached the verge of the descent, he had made a 
turn at such a distance that the sound of his horse’s iron shoes 
gave forth no betrayal of his whereabouts. 

Onward to the waters of the Po he kept steadily, anon looking 
down upon the upturned aud white face of his insensible captive, 
and muttering : 

“ A pretty babe. Always a babe to me. Oh, I know you, fair 
one! Child of a man whom 1 hate so much that all the hates of 
the world could not make one tithe of ! Why 1 do not kill you as 
you lay here in my arms so helpless, I cannot tell; I would like 
to, but something is holding me back. But you shall die, never- 
theless, in time. All shall die who are part of him— the man who 
wronged me and drove me mad!” and as he m uttered, he ap- 
peared to be working into a frenzy, in which his claws of hands 
griped the person of his captive with a fierceness that would have 
wrung a cry of pain from her had she been conscious. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

IDA MAKES HER ESCAPE. 

It chanced that the course of the madman was westward along 
the ravine, and he had strrck the narrow bridle-path scarcely one 
minute before the arrival there of the first of the skirmishing line 
that was coming forward from one of the brigades thrown out by 
General Warren after driving back Stuart’s troopers. 

Paying no heed to the sound of discharging muskets in his rear, 
he pressed on until near the river Po. 

Here was the strange home of this strange being. 

A burrow-like contrivance sunk below the surface of the ground, 
and its top covered with earth. 

It was in a dense spot, and not discernible to the casual eye— a 
mere pit, with timbers stretched across at the level, and over these 
the sod that was now growing luxuriantly. 


28 


BURNT POWDE*. 


Before the entrance was a rubbish heap that further concealed 
its existence. 

At other times, this weird hermit was accustomed to turning his 
great-boned horse loose to feed at will ; but even his crazed intel- 
lect seemed to understand that the animal might be lost in the 
pending strife; and, pausing first to make him fast, he descended 
through the narrow opening to his abode, bearing Ida, still uncon- 
scious, in his arms. 

In a few moments he had a light burning— a light in keeping 
with the rest of his surroundings, for it was no more than a pot of 
grease with a cotton taper floating thereiu. 

The dull flare of the improvised affair gave him an even more 
weird and terrifying appearance. 

Waving the light over the face of the girl whom he had deposited 
upon a pile of tattered blankets, he contemplated her with an al- 
most fiendish aspect. 

“A pretty babe— a pretty babe!” he mumbled. “ But you must 
die, as must all who are kin to the man I have sworn should grovel 
amid the torture of my revenge. Ha! what’s this?” 

Suddenly stooping, he grasped and held nearer to the light one 
of his captive’s hands. 

Glistening there was the topaz ring we have heard her com- 
mune upon as having been given by her at a former time to a dear 
lover, and which had recently come back to her possession in a 
manner that told her Norman McLean was somewhere near. 

His eyes, starting widely, fastened upon the bauble in a look of 
mingled amazement and incredulity. 

The sudden and rude gripe aroused Ida at last from the deathly 
swoon. 

She regained consciousness with a convulsive shiver, and lay, 
gazing, as if in some horrible fascination, up at the wild.creature 
who glowered above her. 

“Where did you get that ?” he demanded, sitylantly, and shaking 
the hand that wore the ring closer under the light. 

For a second she seemed unable to reply. 

“ Speak !” he said, impatiently. “ Where did you get that ring ?” 

“It has been mine ever since I can remember. 

“ A lie ! It was stolen— stolen, I say. What are you doing with 
it?” * 

Ida could recollect having the ring as a plaything when a mere 
child, and afterward to wear constantly, excepting the period dur- 
ing which it was worn by her lover. That it had been a part of 
her mother’s jewelry, and that it had always been considered as a 
present from her, was all she knew of it. 

Hence the intense interest which it seemed to arouse in the mind 
of her half hideous and dreaded captor was a matter of deepest 
wonder to her, 


BURNT POWDER. 23 

For the moment she was held by the eyes of the crazy hermit, 
and partly forgetful of the dangers of her position. 

“ I can tell you no more,” she said, “ than that the ring is a gift 
from my dear mother.” Then, suddenly: “Where ami? What 
manner of place is this ? Why have you brought me here?” 

But the other paid no heed to these inquiries. 

“It is the very one,” he mumbled, with eyes still riveted on the 
pure stone in its rich mounting. “Years and years have passed 
since I saw it last. But I could never forget it. Ah! it greets me 
now like a reminder of those days when Callis Grimshaw was a 
man, not what he now is— an outcast ; a thing that lives but for 
vengeance. It was my gift to her.” 

As mention of the name of Callis Grimshaw came thus from the 
wild being bending above her, Ida thought : 

“That name! I have heard my father utter it in a mysterious 
way, time and again, and every time he has seemed filled with 
some secret dread. What can it mean ? What can there be be- 
tween this horrifying creature ard my father?” 

As she lay there on the pile of blankets, her face was toward the 
small entrance to the underground place. 

And while the perplexing thought was passing in her brain, 
something occurred to distract her from the chilling fascination of 
her captor’s gaze. 

There was a movement at the screened opening— a movement, 
but no noise. Fixing her glance there, she saw presently a face 
peering in. 

And instantaneously with the discovery, her veins felt a warm, 
glad thrill. 

“ It is Norman !” she exclaimed in her heart. 

The maniac just then grasped her hand more tightly, and by a 
dexterous motion wrenched the topaz ring from her finger. 

“ Give it to me!” he cried, huskily. “It is not yours by right; 
it was stolen, I tell you. It was worn by the woman who blighted 
my life, and should not be on the finger of the child of the man 
whom I hate as my deadliest foe !” 

He turned suddenly. 

Wonderful ears, or a wonderful scent for danger must have had 
this hermit of the hills. 

Stealthy as had been the movement of whoever it was that 
glanced, for a moment, in at the opening to this den-like hole, the 
giant appeared to be instinctively warned that there were others 
near besides himself and his captive. 

Hastily depositing his fatty taper on a shelf scooped into the 
earthen wall, he glided on tip-toe away from her side. 

Parting the bushes at the entrance, he looked out. But the hasty 
survey did not seem to satisfy-him. The next instant he had dis- 
appeared. 

Minutes passed. 


3a 


BURNT POWDER. 


Minutes not without their suggestions to Ida Evelyn that here 
might be an opportunity to escape. 

Resolved upon an effort for freedom, she had half risen from the 
pile of blankets, when she saw a hand thrust inward at the open- 
ing, and this beckoned her to come forward. 

“ Yes, it is Norman,” she said to herself, gladly. 

Gaining her feet, she went nimbly across the earthy floor, and 
the hand yet there was outstretched to grasp hers. 

“Norman, is it you ?” she ventured. 

“Ida— darling!” responded a well known and dear voice. 

With a choking cry she felt herself drawn outward and into a 
pair of lovingly embracing arms. 

“ Ah, Norman, I knew you were near.” 

“ You found the ring ?” 

“Yes. And Heaven must have guided you here to rescue me 
from that horrid being who left me but a moment ago ” 

“ And who may return at any instant. Come, let us leave this 
spot. No time for talking now, darling one.” 

The two walked swiftly from the hermit’s den. 

Day dawn was at hand, and they could see their way clearly. 

Day dawn, and not so very far away were now rattling the mus- 
ket volleys of Robinson’s division, and sounding the cheers of 
Crawford’s gallant boys in blue, charging the Confederate bri- 
gades in the clearing two miles north of Spottsylvania Court 
House. 

By the bank of the Po, at some distance from the burrow of the 
mad hermit, the lovers came to a halt, and seated themselves on a 
great log. 

“Are we going back to my home?” she asked, when her lips 
were released from his caresses. 

“ Alas, Ida, you have no home here now.” 

“ No home?” 

“The old mansion is even now burning, and what the fire does 
not perform will be completed by the havoc of the battle that 
will sweep ere long over it and this same spot where we are sit- 
ting.” 

“ The dear old home burned, you say ? 

“Yes.” 

“ And where are my father and mother, Norman ?” 

He half averted his head. From a safe place of concealment he 
had witnessed much of what transpired at the mansion so re- 
cently. He had seen Mrs. Evelyn come forth alone; he had 
watched in vain for a sight of Jacob Evelyn, and his fears then 
were that either those musket shots within the mansion had been 
the death of the old gentleman or he had perished in the flames, 
for he knew that Mr. Evelyn was ip the house at the time of the 
arrival of the troopers. 

“ You do not answer me, Norman? Have you seen my father 


BURNT B0WDER. 31 

and mother since they fled from the burning house, for of course 
they must have fled ?” 

“ I have not seen them, Ida,” he replied, cautiously. 

And he added : 

“Let us not tarry here long ; the danger is momentarily increas- 
ing, two-fold, since you seem to have a remarkable enemy in that 
wild-looking man whose captive you were. Who is he ?” 

“ I have never seen him before in my lif« until this night,” the 
young girl said ; and she told of the mysterious presence of the 
crazy giant in the upper rooms of the mansion, and the subsequent 
singular circumstances of the ring. 


CHAPTER IX. 

A DUEIi WITH SABER AND KNIEE. 

The air of that early Sabbath morn was filled with the disso- 
nance of heavy guns and the roar of musketry. 

The divisions of Crawford, Griffin and Wadsworth were in the 
hot and deadly surge of the battle, fighting, in some places, hand 
to hand wdth the grim Mississippi warriors of Barksdale’s brigade. 

Mingling with the guns was the Southern yell and the lusty 
cheers of the onward pressing boys in blue— onward pressing 
though in the face of a withering fire, and notwithstanding they 
had been well nigh routed at first encounter with this same stub- 
born foe who had come from the Wilderness to meet them again 
and heap the plain before their works with dead. 

In this first conflict of charges, repulses and opening slaughter to 
the field of Spottsylvania, fought Captain Sam Sparl with all the 
bull-dog courage for which he was noted ; in the charge from 
Crawford’s division, which cleared the Confederates from their 
position in the woods, he received a scalp wound from a humming 
bullet that died his ugly face to an uglier aspect, and fiercer than 
were his looks were the shouts he uttered and the oaths he swore 
in keeping his mo** in solid rank as fast as the waves of slugs came 
to sweep down the grim victims. 

As the hour advanced, louder and louder burst the din, fiercer 
and fiercer seemed to wage the warring tumult along the line of 
the Fifth corps. 

Longstreet’s column had not yet wholly arrived before Spottsyl- 
vania Court House; the woods were filled with the Confederate 
soldiery in the vicinity where Norman McLean and Ida had paused 
for rest and the brief conversation of the preceding chapter. 

When he had heard her brief recital again he urged that they 
move on. 

“ But where to, Norman ?” she asked. “ If my home is in ashes, 
I know not where to go.” 

“ Trust me for a ref uge, Ida. I have not been in this neighbor- 


BURNT POWDER. 


r>2 

hood since before the advance of the Army of the Potomac with- 
out providing myself with a refuge.” 

“ And are not you with the army ?” 

“Yes, and no.” 

In the increasing light, Ida saw that his attire was of rather an 
unique character. In the first transport of meeting him, she had 
not observed that he was dressed as a very plain farmer, wearing a 
round, peakless cap that showed his high, broad brow and two 
very black and handsome eyes. 

It had now been nearly five years since that parting time when 
she left the academy at the North, bidding him good-by with 
many misgivings that they might never meet again. 

But as they walked along, keeping carefully back within the 
denser growth of the trees, she said to herself : 

“ It is the same handsome, true hearted Norman whom I ' jft at 
the North. He has not changed noticeably. Why, though, is he 
not dressed in the blue ? I thought surely that he was in the ranks 
of the Northern army.” 

“Yes, and no,” he replied, to her inquiry. “ I hold a lieuten- 
ant’s commission in the second brigade, first division, under Gen- 
eral Bartlett. I am also a bugler with the cavalry division, of 
General Merritt. But for the impossibility of using artillery effec- 
tually at the opening shock of the Wilderness, I would have been 
a gunner there, for I am no mean hand in the management of a 
field piece, I can assure you. So, you see, your true lover is a sol- 
dier after all.” 

He paused with a smile as she gazed perplexedly at him. 

That one man should occupy so many posts of duty in an army* 
was reasonably a matter to cause her considerable wonderment. 

“ Let me explain,” he added. “ Though I am all that I say, yet I 
am not confined to duty in the positions I mention. I am, in real- 
ity, an army detective.” 

“An army detective,” she repeated, surprisedly, for that was 
something she had never heard of. 

“ Not to watch or hunt down anybody in the army, as far as I 
yet know ; but I am a detective by profession-^ fact I never ac- 
quainted you with before — and I am on a singular trail which, I 
and others believe, can be followed to advantage by my working 
in the track of the army now advancing into Virginia. While we 
are seeking the shelter I have in view for you, I can tell you all 
about it.” 

But it was not destined that she should then hear the explana- 
tion of her lover’s business in the neighborhood. 

Before he could say more, there was a rushing sound behind 
them; something alighted squarely on his b,°ck and at the same 
time he received a terrible blow which brought him with a groan 
to the earth. 

Ida uttered a terrified shriek 


BURNT POWDER. 


33 


For she saw Norman proneon the sward, and over him, with 
ragged knoes planted on his breast, was the mad hermit of the 
hills. 

“You thought to rob me of my vengeance !” piped the weird 
being. “ Oh, you were both sly. But I have ears and I have eyes. 
1 could follow you through the blackest night. More blood, now 
— more blood to till my cup of revenge on the hated race of man. 
Another soul to leave the world ! Ha, ha, ha!” 

Norman appeared to be unconscious from the effect of the mer- 
ciless blow delivered by this phantom-footed personage, who could 
glide and strike his victims ere a movement could be made to es- 
cape or resist. 

The nomad Hercules drew a knife from the circle of many 
knives in his broad leather belt, and his visage was gay with a sav- 
age anticipation. 

“Whoever you are,” the girl screamed, “spare him ! Do not do 
suchadeed of murder!” 

She ran forward and grasped the arm that was poising the knife 
aloft to deal the death blow. 

“ Back !” be snarled, furiously. 

“Do not kill him !” sho pleaded, frantically. 

“ Ay. him and all of mankind, but what I will have my glut of 
revenge. Back! Hands off! And— you, too, shall die! Callis 
Grimshaw spares none of the hated race of man, none of those who 
bear the hated name of Evelyn! Oh, I have found the arch 
wretch ; I saw him last night, through the window. Ha, ha, ha!” 

“Ah, Heaven!” breathed the girl, half aloud. “He means my 
father. What can there be between this insane being and my fa- 
ther?” 

And aloud, she cried again : 

“ Do not slay him, I implore you 1 He has never done you harm, 
I am sure.” 

But he wrenched his arm free from her frail clasp the force of 
the motion sending her reeling several feet backward. 

Ere she could once more dart forward to avert the pending blow 
that was to strike out the life of helpless Norman McLean there 
was a whip-like crack from a point behind her, and the maniac, 
with a shrill screech, threw his brawny arms into the air, at the 
same time leaping to his feet. 

“ Malediction !” snapped a familiar voice, and the utterer, Cap- 
tain Killbrag, strode forward. 

At sight of him another screech broke from the hermit. 

A sound so uuearthly that it would have halted any man but the 
dare-devil captain in his tracks. 

The wild creature had received a wound that was not fatal, nor 
even dangerous; but the smart of it rendered him more of a demon 
than usual, and he hurled himself upon Killbrag like some swoop- 
ing bird of prey. 

2 


34 


BURNT POWDER. 


“ Ho, you lunatic ! 1 have caught up with you, have I ? You kid- 
naped my charming, my beautiful Ida! Now, then, keep your dis- 
tance, or I shall put another bullet where I sent that first one 

Ha! you mean to fight?” 

He whipped out his saber and flashed it before the face of the 
charging man in a whizzing circle. 

But, to his amazement, the giant met the blade with one of his 
huge knives, and before he fully comprehended what a ferocious 
antagonist he had to deal with, he found himself being forced 
slowly backward by that gleaming, thrusting, jabbing weapon 
whose short length he had thought to treat with contempt. 

A most singular duel. 

At the first onslaught the captain thought to twist the knife from 
the grip of his adversary. 

Then he opened his eyes at the exhibition of a wonderful 
prowess. 

Finally he gnashed : 

“ By the dragon of George ! you are a smart one with that toy. 
But I am a smarter one with this saber, as you will presently dis- 
cover,” and putting more of both strength and science into the 
twirl of his own weapon, he sought to regain the ground he had at 
the commencement yielded. 

Not an inch gave the warring hermit of the hills. 

Like the short blade he wielded, he seemed made of an unyield- 
ing texture. 

Silent and fierce he fought on, and there came to his visage a grin 
that was most infernally hideous. 

The captain bit at his under lip l ntil his goatee stuck out straight, 
as we have seen it do before in the parlor of Jacob Evelyn. He 
fairly strained his wrist in his exertion to beat down the guard of 
this wild-browed foe or disarm him. 

And the steel of the saber and the knife made sparks in the air 
as they clashed and twined and rung amid the gloomy chaparral. 

The boom of the distant battle lent a marvelous interest to this 
duel at such unmatched advantage. And ever and anon the cap- 
tain snarled, fast losing breath : 

‘‘Malediction!” 


CHAPTER X. 

THE FLIGHT OF THE LOVERS. 

It was not many minutes before Captain Killbrag discovered 
something that startled him. 

His antagonist was really playing with him ! 

The knife in the hand of the tall Hercules was a better weapon 
than the cavalry saber, in the fact that, despite his skill, which 
was of no mean order, Killbrag perceived, after an exercise 
of the cutest of fencing tricks known to him, that the short-bladed 


BURNT POWDER. 35 

though formidable knife was ever ready to meet and turn aside 
each thrust and lunge. 

And broader grew the infernal grin on the white bearded face of 
the hermit warrior ; his orbs, like the scintillating orbs of some 
calculating snake, seemed to say : 

“ A few moments more I shall play with you thus— then I shall 
strike. And when I strike, I shall strike deep to your vitals, to 
kill, to destroy forever!” 

There could be no misinterpreting that unspeakable look in the 
eyes of the hoary-browed madman. 

“By the dragon of George!” muttered the captain, over the end 
of his goatee, that now stuck out straighter than ever. “I believe 
this fellow can give me my quietus at any moment he may choose! 
Am I to be worn out and then killed ? Is he waiting until my 
wrist is too tired to hold this weapon any longer, and then to jab 
that knife of his into my bowels? Ho ! I will not die by the hand 
of this lunatic in rags!— I swear I will not !” and with an energy 
reborn from the dread that was creeping into his callous heart, he 
griped his saber with a firmer hand, presently with both hands, 
and round and about he swept the trenchant blade in lightning 
strokes and cuts, intending at last to beat his adversary back or 
down by sheer force. 

But here again he calculated without crediting the remarkable 
strength of his foe. 

And we have seen to some extent what that strength was. 

Suddenly, and just as Killbrag was on the point of dropping his 
guard in a desperate exhaustion, the maniac leaped backward 
beyond the scope of the saber, and wheeling short around darted 
away. 

The action was so totally unexpected by the captain— and hap- 
pening at the instant when he was making another of those furious 
sweeps at the head of his enemy, with the half calculation that 
much of the force of the stroke would be met by the ever ready 
knife— that he cut through only empty air, and by the force of the 
intended blow was carried spinning around on one heel. 

“ Malediction ! I am a dead man!” he blurted, fully expecting 
to feel the cold steel between his ribs at his back. 

But he completed the spinning circle without the sensation of 
having received any wound, and stopped himself at a plant, with 
saber feebly thrown forward to clash again on the other’s weapon. 

Brief as had been that turn-about on his heel, by the time he 
faced once more to the front, the tall form of rags had utterly 
vanished. 

“ Ho ! he is gone!” was all the astonished captain could pant. 

Had the strong-armed being been facing the captain then, the 
latter would have fallen an easy victim to the huge and ugly knife, 
for his strength was completely spent ; he dropped his saber point 


36 


BURNT POWDER. 


to a chip on the sward and rested, out of breatn, on the massive 
hilt. 

In the absorbing exertion of the duel, an thought of Ida, or of 
that other person whose life the Hercules was about to sacrifice 
had escaped him 

Now, reminded of the girl he was in pursuit of, ne cast a quicit 
glance around the glade. 

Norman and Ida had also disappeared. 

The detective lover had recovered from the blow which felled 
him, as the captain and the madman went hotly at their contest. 
Ida discovered this, and hastened to his side, a cry of gladness 
ready to burst from her lips ; but he, instantly comprehending the 
situation of affairs, made a warning sign and quietly arose. 

“ Come,” he said, briefly. 

Hand in hand they hurried away,' and had disappeared in the 
depths of the chaparral before their absence was known. 

The hermit was first to note that his intended victims had fled. 
And the same powerful motive which had caused him to so di- 
rectly assert that Ida, too, was to die by his hand as part of his 
mysterious vengeance upon her father, now drew him from the 
captain to a mad pursuit of the pair. 

Thus really by a miracle was the captain permitted to survive 
after meeting with one who seemed to have sworn an oath of ex- 
termination upon the whole of mankind. 

Providence was favoring the devoted couple in this instance, 
however, for the course taken by their wild-man enemy was at an 
angle diverging from the path. 

“Malediction!” the captain ejaculated at last, sheathing his 
saber with a clang. “ They have eluded me again— the girl and 
that unknown fellow who was with her. Curse my haste! why 
did I not permit the lunatic to jab his knife into the gizzard of the 
carrion who seems to be in high favor with the woman I mean to 
make my wife.” 

Picking up his revolver, and carrying it ready for use, he strode 
across and entered the timber— entered, by merest accident, at the 
very point where the lovers had gone in their flight. Had his gait 
been more swift, possibly he might have overtaken them, for they 
were proceeding rather slowly because of exercising caution in 
tread and taking pains to avoid the denser undergrowth, lest some 
swaying or crackling branch should betray them to the pursuer 
they fully expected. 

“ I think, dear Ida,” he said, in an undertone, while supporting 
her onward by the arm, “ we have succeeded in giving them the 
slip. But this occurrence will defer our arrival at the refuge I had 
in view for you, and it increases our danger, for the woods are 
swarming now with Confederates. We are almost directly in the 
midst of their lines. The skirmishers were driven in just at dawn, 
and Hill, with his troops, is all along the road. Hear the guns !” 


BURNT POWDER. 37 

“ Ah I” she sighed, “there is many a brave man going down 
there.” 

“And we must go further to the south of them. Indeed, it is 
partly necessary to pass by our ruined home to reach the haven I 
speak of, for it is quite at the bank of the Po, and nearly opposite 
Glady Run. Hark ! 

They could hear the rumble of .artillery coming down the 
road from the direction of Tally’s Mill. 

A tremor of apprehension passed over the girl, as she said : 

“Dear Norman, I fear I am a great coward ; but since I am re- 
united with you— and after we have been separated for so long— I 
am in dread of anything that can possibly tear us asunder. Oh, 
let us make haste.” 

Pausing to imprint a kiss upon the loving lips of the speaker, 
again he stared onward, his keen eyes alert for danger at their 
front or side. 

Gradually they were leaving the sound of the bloody conflict 
behind them as they drew near to the spot where once had stood 
Ida’s home. 

Keeping in the timber at the edge of the clearing where the 
mansion had its site, they saw nothing of the structure but four 
bare walls rearing in the grim ness of recent smoke and flame, and 
still ascended lazily from the charred heap. 

She covered her face with her hands to shut out a sight that 
could but wring her heart sadly. 

Neither, as they stood for a moment there, saw a ghastly object 
that lay prone and still at the verge of the trees — the form of a 
man whose face was bathed in blood and who appeared to be 
dead. 

“ Come, Ida,” he said, gently. “ Let us not contemplate this 
scene, which must bring so much of sorrow to your heart.” 

“ If I only knew,” she half sobbed, “where my father and 
mother could be! What can have happened to them since I was 
so ruthlessly dragged from them. My soul feels heavy, Norman; 
there is an oppression of some awful calamity within me.” 

“ Come, come! we are not safe ourselves here. Come, Ida!” 

Slowly, reluctantly, with yearning gaze turned upon her de- 
stroyed home, she allowed herself to be led away from the spot, 
and not until the trees hid from view the last vestige of the 
ruins, did she turn her head to look upon the path they were fol- 
lowing. 

Hardly had they vanished among the trees when the broad- 
shouldered figure of Captain Killbrag emerged from the side 
where they had come upon the site of the mansion. 

He had not seen the pair ; but something seemed to be leading 
him unerringly upon the track of the lovers, and he was not then 
very far behind. 

“ IJc I” he exclaimed. “ The old house ;s burned entirely down. 


38 


BURNT POWDER. 


I am sorry about the wine which I know was in the cellar. Rare 
wine old Jacob always had. But I thought I saw a flutter of a 
dress in yonder copse. Something tells me that I am on the right 
trail to catch my charming Ida Evelyn. I— Ha ! what’s this, by 
the dragon of George!” 

Almost at his feet lay that ghastly object which had escaped the 
notice of Ida and her lover. 

As he half recoiled from it, and fixed his surprised gaze upon it, 
again his favorite interjection burst from him : 

“ Malediction !” 

The lifeless and bloody form was that of Jack Evelyn. 

A horrible corpse it appeared to be. But how had it escaped the 
conflagration of the mansion? 


CHAPTER XI. 

A FORTUNATE HIDING PEACE. 

Captain Killbrag had seen many ugly wounds in past battles of 
that same civil war in which he had figured as a cavalryman and 
won his epaulettes by daring, even ruthlessness, on the fields of 
gore. 

as he stooped over the body of Jacob Evelyn he had time to ob- 
serve what was of no interest to him at the time he was ranting 
through the mansion in search of Ida. 

At first glance it would have seemed that the bullet which had 
stricken the old gentleman had penetrated the brain. But closer 
examination revealed that it was but a wound on the outer of the 
skull, though terribly furrowing the scalp and smearing hair and 
face with the oozy stain of red. 

“Umph!” he grunted, “he did not die by that slug, I see. But 
he is dead nevertheless ; yes, dead as a nail,” giving the body a 
punch with the toe of his heavy cavalry boot, “and I have no 
leisure to waste over dead men. I must catch up with my beauti- 
ful Ida. I am sure that she and that carrion with her, whoever he 
may be, that has popped up as a companion for her, have gone 
this way. This tear from a dress that I know she wore convinces 
me that I am on the right course,” and he shook a piece of dress 
goods in his griping hand, which his quick, roving glance had seen 
and the hand snatched from a bush as he came along. “ Maledic- 
tion! I will come up with them shortly, never fear; and when I 
do, I shall make shivers and splinters of the one who is now hurry- 
ing her away from me.” 

Once more, and swifter than before, hecontinued onward, cross- 
ing the little clearing and disappearing in the woods fairly on the 
track of the lovers. 

But the captain was not to overtake the two yet. By a turn 
which Norman made from the plain west of the old court house, 
Killbrag was thrown astray. 


BURNT POWDER. 


39 


And it was not long after this that the array detective led his 
sweetheart to a nook that did indeed present the promise of a safe 
retreat. 

It was almost as completely hidden as was the underground 
abode of the hermit of the hills, was the cabin, with but a single 
room, that stood nigh to the east bank of the Po, a short distance 
south of Glady Run. 

It was here he made his secret rendezvous while working on the 
mysterious duty which he had mentioned to Ida, and further ex- 
planation of which had been interrupted in a manner so nearly re- 
sulting in the loss of his life. 

“ I do not think, Ida, that any one will discover us here. Rest, 
darling, while I show you how I have made out here like some old 
bachelor. You must be hungry.” 

The one apartment of the cabin had no furniture, but Norman 
had provided it with several clean logs, squared one upon the 
other, affording rudely welcome seats. 

In crevices, and on rough pins that protruded from the side of 
the nearly toppling structure, were several bundles, and bringing 
forward some of these, he smilingly spread before her a repast of 
corn cake and meat. 

“ There are some darkies left in this section yet,” he said, “ and 
the man who can prove himself to be of the Yankee army gener- 
ally finds favor among them when in need of food or shelter from 
a hard pressing foe. It is not a very delicate meal, but it will at 
least satisfy the craving of hunger. Eat, if you can, for you may 
need your strength in case we have not eluded our pursuer, the 
madman.” 

“ And the other, the Confederate captain,” said Ida, with an ap- 
prehensive glance toward the doorway, where there was no door. 

“ Ah, yes ; he seemed to be after you for some cause, too.” 

A frown settled on his brow when the young girl related the oc- 
currences within the mansion on the night gone. 

“ So I have two doughty rivals to contend with ?” 

“Not rivals, Norman , they are rather my persecutors. If any- 
thing should happen to my dear father and mother, I fear I would 
have a hard time between Captain Killbrag, of Stuart’s troopers, 
and Captain Sparl, of the Mississippi brigade— for the latter de- 
clared two years ago that he would yet make me his bride, and 1 
recall how angry father was at his impudence, and forbade him 
ever entering the house again.” 

Norman McLean looked long and passionately into the face of 
the beautiful girl whose heart he knew was wholly his, and he 
said, with all a lover’s ardor: 

“I shall be on the lookout for them, darling. And depend, 
neither this Captain Sparl nor this Captain Killbrag, as you name 
them, will snatch you from me.” 


40 


UURNT POWDER. 


“And that other— that horrible other,” she reminded, with a 
little shiver. 

“The strange fellow in rags who seemed to seek my life, as you 
have told me while we came along ?— for I believe I was uncon- 
scious and unaware of the knife being raised to strike into my 
heart as you have described.” 

“Yes, that one. Oh, Norman, what can there be between him 
and my father that'he should hate my father so ? He declared that 
I should die by his hand, that all who were near and dear to my 
father, and my father himself, wer°i to perish for some wrong 
done him in the past.” 

“ Some fancied wrong, doubtless. He is evidently crazed, and it 
is some freak that he has fastened his hate upon your good father, 
Ida.” 

“ Still I have cause to fear Callis Grimshaw.” 

“ Callis Grimshaw !” cried the young man, suddenly. 

“That is his name, I judge, by words he dropped when he held 
me a captive in the strange place half underground.” 

He was gazing at her with widened eyes, as if he had heard some- 
thing to cause him vast amazement. 

“ Callis Grimshaw !” he exclaimed again. 

“ I am quite sure it must be the name of the demented creature 
who seems to hate me and my father so intensely.” 

“ Why, Ida, that is the name of a party of whom I am now in 
search— the name of the man who is deeply concerned in the piece 
of detective business which brings me to this section.” 

It was Ida’s turn to evince surprise. 

“ Wait a moment.” 

Norman arose and went to the doorway, glancing outward on 
all sides through the screening trees. 

It was not a difficult matter for him to reconnoiter his surround- 
ings from the doorway, though it would have been but a mere 
chance had any one discovered the cabin, hidden as it was under a 
great mass of tangled vines, and amid the trees that had grown 
interlocking in a dense wildness all about and over the crumbling 
roof and walls. 

Only accident, excepting that some one was expecting to find 
just such a secret abiding place there. 

Feeling satisfied that no one was near, he returned to her side, 
and said : 

“What you have uttered has, in all probability, put me on the 
track of the very object that brings me here. While you are eat- 
ing of the scant repast, Ida, I will tell you the brief facts in the 
case.” 

“I am curious to hear, Norman; more so than ever now, since 
you hint that this mysterious person is mixed up with a portion 
of your detective business. Are you quite sure that we are safe 
from discovery here.” 


BURNT POWDER. 


41 


“No one is in sight outside, and I think, if I am a judge of 
sound, that the battle progressing among the twisting branches of 
the Po, is not coming any nearer. The graycoats are fiery fighters, 
and I think Warren must be held in check. But the little story I 

mean to tell you ” 

“ Yes. Let me hear it, Norman.” 


At this hour in the morning the battle was waging lively be- 
tween the blue brigades of Robinson and the grim warriors of 
Hill ; and over the Ridge, from the Carharpin road came the 
thunder of artillery, where Miles and Gregg’s cavalry were hold- 
ing back the bold hostiles threatening the Union advance. Ever 
and constantly the reverberating volleys of musketry seemed to 
float like waves on top of waves southward from the front of the 
Fifth corps, encouraged now by the swiftly coming support of 
Sedgwick. 

The ominous sounds penetrated to the concealment of Ida and 
her lover, and could not but hold a part of their attentive hearing 
as Norman proceeded to relate the brief detail of his detective 
business there in the chaparral of Virginia. 

“ It is a story,” the young man said, “ of seeming horror, yet of 
so much mystery that it has at last been doubted whether it was as 
wicked as at first appeared. Either there was a dark and red 
crime committed in the lower counties of Maryland some twenty 
years ago, or the pall of the most remarkable mystery yet re- 
mains there, in which figured, as one of the principal actors, this 
man named Callis Grimshaw. You really mean to say, Ida, that, 
by what that crazy fellow said in your hearing, while he held you 
captive, you believe his name to be Callis Grimshaw?” 

“ Quite sure, Norman.” 

“ Then, if he is indeed the man, I cannot wonder that he is roam- 
ing the earth with a brain dethroned of its reason,” McLean said 
reflectively. 

“ The story, Norman. I am eager to hear it. Something dread- 
ful must have happened to Callis Grimshaw to bring him to such a 
state as he is evidently now in.” 

“ Yes, something dreadful,” he admitted. 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE SECRET OP CALLIS GRIMSHAW. 

“ Callis Grimshaw, about twenty-one years ago,” Norman Mc- 
Lean proceeded to say, “ was a tolerably wealthy planter, in the 
county of Dorchester, in Maryland. He had married a very beau- 
tiful woman whose maiden name was AunoCrowly. No children 
had, or seemed likely ever to, bless their union, and they lived 
alone in considerable luxury ; lived in happiness, too, as every one 
could see. But one day a great change came over the young wife, 


42 


BURNT POWDER. 


in that she appeared to be in a strange state of unrest, pallor, for 
which she could not, or would not, give any explanation. As days 
went by she became more mysterious, until, at last, the husband’s 
solicitude took the form of an unaccountable but fixed jealousy; 
he began to watch his wife’s movements, and soon conceived the 
terrible suspicion that her faith was breaking, or was about to 
break, and bring desolation into his home. For awhile he could 
discover nothing definite to warrant him in charging her with be- 
ing recreant to her marriage vows; and then, one night, there 
came the blow that seemingly told him the beautiful and frail 
Anne had deserted him. 

“ He was not without suspicions as to who had been the cause of 
his misery; these directed to a gentleman who was a near neigh- 
bor, and who had come to reside in Dorchester at about the same 
time as he did. Now, do not start or look alarmed, dear Ida, at 
what I shall say ; but, by a strange coincidence, the name of the 
one suspected of having wronged Callis Grimshaw was the same as 
that of your own good father.” 

“Ah!” the young girl half gasped, with dilating eyes. 

“ Do not be worried by this circumstance. There are many peo- 
ple in the world hy the name of Evelyn, dear Ida.” 

“Yes. Go on,” she requested, in a slight tremble. 

For she had instantly thought : 

“ Can it be ? No, no, no, my father was never so great a wretch 
as that! My father would never have done such a deed. Yet the 
madman’s hints— oh, horror! I cannot think that to be the reason 
he has sworn, as he intimated, that I and all by the name of Eve- 
lyn shall die in the strokes of his vengeance. No; raj” father has 
never done this thing. Norman must be right — it is but a strange 
circumstance of similar names.” 

“There, Ida, I did not mean to startle you, and I am sure there 
is no cause for that troubled look in your face.” 

“Go on, Norman. What else?” 

“ Much else. What was the first name of this party, Evelyn, has 
never transpired, for he was only in the neighborhood a short time 
previous to the disappearance of Anne Grimshaw, and he also dis- 
appeared from there at the same period. As it then was, the affair 
was only of a private nature, and what assistance the county au- 
thorities rendered the bereaved man were only such as they felt 
warranted in striving to ascertain where the recreant wife had 
gone. 

“ This was unsuccessful. Nor did Grimshaw seem to wish the in- 
terference of outsiders. But an after occurrence placed matters 
in such an aspect, that the authorities were obliged to take hold. 
At a day just one week subsequent to the supposed elopement of 
Anne Grimshaw, her dead body was found on the river shore, with 
marks of violence upon- her. They were marks that indicated a 
murder. 


BURNT POWDER. 


43 

“Grimshaw had left the neighborhood, presumably in pursuit of 
the man who had wronged, and the woman who had deserted him. 
Some of the wealthier people there subscribed to a fund for the 
employment of detectives to trace out the murderer. But the 
murdered wife lay in her grave year after year, without any de- 
velopment as to who the assassin could be. Grimshaw had returned 
once to look upon the plain marked mouud covering the silent 
bosom once so dear to him ; then he went away again, no one 
knew where. 

“ In the years that have passed, many different detectives have 
taken up the thread of the tragedy in hope of winning the reward 
that was afterward offered for the discovery of the assassin, and 
which stands to-day. I came upon the trail just before I made 
your acquaintance. I visited the scene of the tragedy, where, one 
would suppose, every trace, if any had possibly been left, had long 
ago been obliterated. But I was working under a luckier star, I 
guess, for I came upon a clew. 

“Under the seat of an old arbor, where it had lain through the 
seasons and tempests of years, I found a lady’s portmonnaie of 
polished silver and tortoise shell. It was of very solid and tight 
closing material and make, which accounted for what I found 
therein.” 

“Ah, you found something in the portmonnaie,” Ida broke in, 
as she leaned forward to catch every word of the recital. 

“ Yes, a letter and a picture. Both were very dim, but fairly 
preserved in the tight receptacle— distinct enough for me to read 
the letter, which had no signature or address, and was couched in 
most affectionate terms.” 

“And the picture, Norman?” 

“The picture of a manjprobably past forty and not yet fifty years 
of age rather handsome and intellectual. He wore luxurious side 
whiskers, and above the whiskers was a mark, a line extending 
down the outer border of the whiskers, either like a faint scar, or 
because of some defect in the photograph.” 

“His hair?” came in a quick, half breathless inquiry from the 
girl. 

“Photographs do not give any accurate idea of the color of a 
person’s hair, but it struck me that it might be a mixture of gray 
and black.” 

‘ ‘ Merciful Heaven ! N orman ’ ’ 

“What is it, Ida?” 

“You are describing a picture of my father, which I have seen, 
which my mother says was taken at a time over twenty years ago, 
when he came to Virginia to wed with her.” 

“The fact of his visiting Virginia for that purpose was well 
known to the detectives who had the case before I took it up. I 
have with me the letter of which I speak; the photograph I left 
behind, as the face was imprinted in my mind indelibly. I would 


44 


fcURNT POWDE*. 


know the original of the latter at any time I might meet it. Here 
is the letter, if you can make it out.” 

From a wallet he produced a worn and faded document and 
reached it across to her. 

No sooner had her glance fallen upon it than she uttered a 
short, whispery gasp and crunched the sheet in her hand convul- 
sively. 

“ Ida, what is it, darling ?” the lover anxiously inquired. 

“ Ah,” she moaned, “ this letter which I hold in my hand is a ter- 
rible revelation to me.” 

“ How ? In what way ?” 

“ It was found in the portmonnaie?” 

“Yes.” 

“ And the portmonnaie was the property of Did you say it 

belonged to Anne Grimshaw ? I have forgotten.” 

“ Undoubtedly hers, for there was a tiny golden shield on one of 
the halves of the pretty thing, bearing her name. But why these 
particular questions, Ida, and why are you so disturbed ?” 

“Norman,” she said, faintly, “ if the portmonnaie was hers, and 
if this note was in it, with its endearing terms, then I believe my 
own father was the one who ruined the home of Callis Grimshaw, 
for the writing is his!” 

“Impossible!” 

“ Do I not know it well?” 

“But it is some further singular coincidence in the case. It 
must be. For let me tell you, the detectives who had the matter 
in hand before me, and myself since, have followed the entire do- 
ings of your father from the hour he left that locality in Dorches- 
ter. We know that he left there alone; he straightway went to 
Virginia and married your mother, afterward taking her North 
with him. And it was not until after your birth that he was made 
aware ” 

“Aware of what, Norman?” as he hesitated. 

“ Well, we detectives have a way of finding out things, you know, 
and we learned that Jacob Evelyn fled from the North to escape 
the man who, said the same rumor that reached him, telling him 
that he was suspected of the wrong to Grimshaw, had sworn to 
wreak a furious revenge upon him.” 

“ And you knew, all along, that my father was suspected of this 
dark crime?” 

“ Only suspected by the wronged husband, Ida; no one else for 
an instant believed that Jacob Evelyn was in any way connected 
with Grimshaw’s trouble.” 

“Yet this handwriting ot the letter you found tells a fearful tale 
to me.” 

“ It need not. I am as sure of your father’s innocence as I am of 
yours— and you were not then born. Give it no more serious 
thought.” 


BtTRNT POWDER. 


46 

And when he had to some extent quieted the mental perturba- 
tion produced by the letter whose faded ealigraphy so much re- 
sembled the well-known hand of her father — a letter to a married 
woman addressed in terms that glowed with affection — he said, in 
conclusion : 

“ I am now looking for this very Callis Grimshaw. It is believed 
that possibly he has struck the trail of the true murderer of his 
wife and has either had, or intends to have, vengeance in his own 
way. If he has not already slain the man he has, I must admit, 
good cause to slay, I have hopes of extracting the secret of the 
party’s identity from him, and with the reward which I have in- 
formed you still awaits the discovery in Dorchester, I will have 
wealth enough to offer my darling a pretty and bounteous home. 
At the same time I will be serving the cause of justice.” 


CHAPTER XIII. 

A SHOT FROM KII/LBRAG. 

Though there was much that Norman told his betrothed in ad- 
dition to what has been written for the reader’s perusal, its con- 
densed form will suffice to give the idea of the strange trail started 
upon by the young detective— to come up with the deeply wronged 
man, and, in the belief that the latter had found or knew the 
scoundrel and probable murderer who had sown ruin in his home, 
get upon the track of that murderer himself that he might both 
serve the end of Justice and at the same time win the large reward 
which had been entered on the county books of Dorchester, in 
Maryland, and bad not as yet been withdrawn. 

It was near the hour of noon when Norman concluded his recital, 
and again he arose to take a survey from the doorless doorway of 
their refuge. 

It was well that he did this, for at the moment he looked forth, 
he saw several soldiers in gray m the act of crossing the stream to 
the side on which was hidden the cabin. 

Sharpshooters he knew them to be, by their free-ranger-like ac- 
couterments, and the peculiar guns they carried. 

‘ "What do you see?” asked Ida, who detected that her lover’s 
attention had been arrested by something unusual. 

“ Only a lot of Confederates,” he answered, lightly. 

“Coming here?” 

“ Coming over the river, but not to this spot, I’ll venture, for the 
old cabin Is admirably concealed by nature ; and the sharpshooters 
—for that they are— seem to be in a hurry. They will land near 
her I think, so do not talk in a loud voice, Ida, lest they hear us. 
For myself I do not care ; but I share much the same feeling which 
you said was yours. I do not wish anything to transpire to sepa- 
rate us. And when we can find your father and mother we will 


1JURNT POWDER. 


46 

all go northward, where there is an assured safety. I know that 
your father leans more toward the North than the South.” 

“ But my mother, Norman.” 

“ Well, we must try and overcome her scruples against the cause 
of the Federal government. If we fail in that ” 

“Then?” 

“ Then I shall ask you to be my bride at all cost. You are of 
age now, Ida.” 

“Nearly so.” 

“And you love me well enough to let nothing stand between us 
and the sacred happiness we both hope for ?” 

“Yes, Norman,” she answered, trustingly. 

“ ’Sh ! Be very still, Ida. The boat load of Confederates is now 
close to the shore. Do not speak loud.” 

She arose with the intention of going to his side to have a glimpse 
also at the soldiers that she felt to be her enemies, because they 
were the enemies of the man she loved above all men on earth. 

The backs of both were toward the rear wall of the cabin, and 
neither saw there, spying through a crevice in the logs, where the 
mud plastering had long ago fallen out, a pair of balefully-brilliant 
eyes that were fixed upon them. 

As the young girl arose, something shiny protruded inward 
through the crevice and was pointed at the form of the lover in 
the doorway. 

A pistol barrel ! 

“Yes, come here, Ida, and take a look, if you wish ; but be very 
cautious ot your voice. You see, they are but a few yards off, and 
an unguarded sound will at once betray us— Ah, Heaven ! I am 
shot!” 

For at the instant she reached his side, there rung dully into the 
apartment the report of a revolver. 

Norman McLean, without further sound than that one agonized 
cry of pain, sunk backward to the earthen floor. 

Ida recoiled, speechless and rigid as one paralyzed, gazing horror- 
struck upon his prone form. 

And ere she could fully realize that he had been stricken foully 
by a shot from ambush, a tall figure came striding in at the open- 
ing, exclaiming, as he appeared: 

“ Malediction! I have you again— and I think I have done for 
that fellow who was taking you away from me!” 

Captain Killbrag ! 

The trooper captain, being at the back of the cabin, had not 
observed the approach of the sharpshooters at the front. 

Nor did he see them now, as he laid a violent hold upon the 
affrighted girl’s wrist and proceeded to drag her forth. 

“Norman ! Norman !” screamed Ida, as she found herself being 
forced away from the apparently dead presence of her lover. 

“ Bah! cease your noise!” he gritted, angrily. “ Come, you are 


BURNT POWDER. 


47 

to go with me. By the dragon of George ! you are to be my bride, 
too, for I have sworn it. I tried to win you by fair proposal aud 
now I shall try another plan. You are mine, Ida Evelyn, and the 
sooner you make up your mind to that, the better it will be for 
you.” 

Stoutly but in vain she resisted his onward pulling grasp. But 
when he threatened to take her in his arms if she did not desist, 
she finally allowed herself to be hurried away with sinking heart, 
and mind almost crazed by having witnessed what she believed 
was the ruthless murder of Norman. 

The Confederate sharpshooters, attracted by the shot and the 
cry, were hastening toward the spot wherein was concealed the 
cabin, and they saw a man in a Confederate cavalryman’s uniform 
to all intents maltreating a young and beautiful girl. 

“ Forward, here!” ordered the leader of the rifles. “Although 
that party wears the gray, he is too roughly handling a female to 
suit my idea of right. We will investigate this little occurrence.” 

Killbrag had not the slightest idea where he was taking the 
persecuted girl ; his only object seemed to be to get her away from 
where she was. 

As he tramped swiftly on, compelling her almost at a run by his 
rude gripe and his ruder speeches, he suddenly came to a stop— so 
suddenly that for a second he tilted forward on tip-toe— and 
snapped out: 

“Malediction!” 

He had nearly stumbled over a man’s body that lay directly 
across his path, face up— a bloody, ghastly face that he and his 
shrinking captive recognized despite its disfigurement. 

The lifeless body of Jacob Evelyn. 

A shriek broke from Ida, and she swooned heavily on the cap- 
tain’s arm. 

“ Ho !” he blurted. “ What does this mean ? How the dogs did 
that body get away off here? Dead men do not crawl about like 
that. But I have no time to fool over dead men ; I must get my 
prize somewhere where she will not escape me again. Where will 
that be, I wonder? And she has fainted! It is outlandish that 
women will faint when they are not wanted to. Now, then, I 
must carry her, I suppose. Bah ! a fainting woman !” 

Lifting her limp form in his strong arms, he stepped over the 
body of Jacob Evelyn, and continued his indefinite flight. 

The shriek of the girl had put a greater speed into the feet of the 
pursuing sharpshooters, who were as anxious as their leader to as- 
certain what meant the singular scene they had but indistinctly 
witnessed. 

Bearing his burden with many a grunt of dissatisfaction at the 
necessity of the effort, Killbrag was making his way on through 
a sparse fringe of woodland at some distance from where he had 
come so unexpectedly upon the body of the man who was the fa- 


48 


BURNT POWDER. 


ther of the girl he persecuted, when again something brought him 
to a halt. 

This time it was an object of danger in his path, and of a kind 
that caused him to instantly lower Ida to the soddy earth and lay 
his hand on his saber hilt. 

In front of him, just emerging from a clump of trees, was the 
figure of Captain Sam Sparl. 

Sparl was bare headed. Around his head was wrapped a broad 
bandage, clotted with blood, which came far enough down upon 
his bearded visage to cover one eye. 

It was an ugly and painful wound he carried as a reminder of 
the moment when he and his men had been foremost in meeting 
the charge of Griffin’s boys in blue. And shortly after this he had 
made his way to the rear. 

But the burly Mississippiau was not alone. 

Griped in his broad and coarse hands and twined tightly about 
his thick wrists were two leashes of hide. 

At the forward ends of the hides, now taut as the trooper cap- 
tain appeared, were two monstrous bloodhounds that vented an 
angry and simultaneous yelp, and struggled as if they would have 
broken their bonds and hurled themselves upon Killbrag, to bite, 
tear and devour. 

With the huge brutes held by a great effort in check, and as he 
paused in some astonishment at thus meeting with his rival for 
the possession of Ida Evelyn, and enraged to see that young lady 
apparently in the power of the trooper, his one visible eye burned 
muddily with the tremoring hues of a soap-bubble, and his beard 
dropped on his lowering jaw as he threw up his shaggy head. 

“Ho ! Fury and flames I s ’ roared the mouth of Sparl. 

“ Malediction !’’ gritted hissingly from the bearded lips of Jon- 
athan Killbrag. 

The latter whipped out his saber at once, for he saw that it 
would be impossible to avoid a struggle with the man he hated 
from the moment of the announcement that he too was striving to 
secure Ida Evelyn for a bride. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

SPARL AND HIS BLOODHOUNDS. 

As Killbrag advanced, Captain Sparl seemed to hesitate as to 
what he should do. 

“Guns and death!” he muttered, savagely, in his immense 
beard. “Here is the parrot who seems to defy me for the posses, 
sion of the charming Ida Evelyn ! There is Ida with him. How 
did he get hold of her? But no matter. Now, shall I let loos# 
these dogs and have them rend him into mincemeat, or shall I 
give him fair battle and this time run through his vitals to a cer- 
tainty? Come, I think I am a match for him— more than a 
match,” and with this he dexterously dragged back the dogs to a 


BURNT POWDER. 49 

sapling, aiid, by a quick twist, had the leashes turned^and knotted, 
holding them firmly. 

“ Now, curse you !” he snarled. “Come on with that saber of 
yours. Once before I disarmed and ought to have killed you ; this 
time I will make sure. Come on !” 

“Ho,” thought Killbrag, “I imagined at first that he meant to 
set those brutes upon me. But he means fight. Good ! I shall 
show him a trick or two, which I had not the opportunity for try- 
ing at the mansion last night.” 

“Come on, I say!” bantered Sparl, drawing and giving his 
sword a flourish that showed he possessed a marvelous wrist. 

“ Malediction! I am coming, you worm !” 

“ Worm yourself ! half a dozen worms!” retorted the bearded 
and thick lips. “I shall first run you through and then plant my 
brogan on your neck. Ho, come on !” 

“And I shall spit you like the pig you are! By the dragon of 
George— yes!” 

And thus bantering, defying, goading one another to anger, the 
two rival captains came together with a flourish of sword and 
saber, the weapons striking blade to blade with spiteful clash that 
flashed sjjarks in the eyes of both. 

It was as they thus opened a deadly conflict that the squad of 
sharpshooters emerged upon the spot. 

A singular scene they looked upon. 

Two officers in the gray and epauletted uniform of the Southern 
army engaged at a mortal encounter, while the tied hounds at the 
sapling were leaping in mad efforts to break their leashes, utter- 
ing loud yelps, fierce snaps and growlings and anon a mingled and 
prolonged baying that filled the timber with a mournful sound of 
curdling tenor, augmented by the smiting, ringing steel of saber 
and sword that twined, circled, clanged and gleamed in the gripes 
of the two fierce, fighting men. 

For an instant they paused to contemplate the duel, then the 
leader hastened forward to where the unconscious girl lay. 

His men clustered around. 

They, like their leader, seemed to be more attracted by the face 
of the beautiful girl than by the strange duelists. 

Killbrag saw them, as he moved about his antagonist, plying his 
saber with all the force and skill at his conimand. 

“Malediction!” he uttered, in a deep breath. “Am I to lose 
my charming prize again ? What brought these fellows meddling 
here ere I have spitted this burly viper before me?” 

And Sparl, as his one useful eye fell upon the comers, ex- 
claimed : 

“ Death and fire! who are these? I wish they had remained away 
fi om here until I have flayed wide the bowels of this big harlequin 
who is after my charming Ida!” 

Both were loo busy with the struggle, that was to be a mortal one 


10 


BURNT POWDER. 


if either could make it so, to pay much heed to the little crowd of 
sharpshooters. 

The fight continued until interrupted in a rather remarkable 
manner. 

Suddenly all were startled by a voice that broke forth in an un- 
earthly cry, piercing their ears and drawing their glance to one 
side of the timber. 

The same unqualifiable yell which Captain Killbrag and his 
troopers had heard at the mansion on the night previous. 

The saber and sword unreaved, even the hounds ceased their 
tumult, and seemed to partake of the surprise that fell over them 
all. 

Following the curdling screech, and without a second’s inter- 
mission, there bounded forward from the trees a giant figure with 
streaming beard and locks of hoary white. 

It was the mad hermit of the hills. 

In one hand, and raised aloft, he wielded a long, stout staff; in 
the other hand he griped one of the huge knives with which his 
broad belt ever bristled. 

With glaring orbs, swing, knife and staff in mowing circles 
around him, he dashed like a hurricane into the midst of the sharp- 
shooters, overturning and slightly wounding several ere they could 
collect their senses. 

Then, before the two captains could lanch themselves forward 
to prevent it, the weird and terrible creature had grasped up the 
form of Ida Evelyn. 

The whole occurrence did not consume more than ten seconds, 
and he was off again as swiftly as he came, bearing the young girl 
in his herculean arms from their sight. 

“Save my soul!” ejaculated the leader of the squad, “ what 
kind of thing is that ? After him, men ! Rescue that young lady 
at all hazard.” 

“Shoot the madman!” roared Sparl, as the men started with 
alacrity on the trail of the half hideous being. 

“Ho! yes; riddle him into pieces!” supplemented the trooper 
captain, who, nevertheless, kept a wary glance upon the Mississip- 
pian, lest the latter should give him a treacherous poke with his 
sword-point. 

“ What does this all mean, let me ask?” the leader of the riflemen 
said, coming to the side of the antagonistic pair. “ Who is that 
young lady ? What is the row about?” 

His tone of address showed him to be one of considerable inde- 
pendence, and not to be awed by the fact that the men he spoke to 
wore epaulettes of captaincy. 

“She is my intended bride, by the horn of Satan !” Sparl an- 
swered, boisterously. 

“The mushroom lies!” Killbrag snapped. 

“ Mushroom yourself. Flay me! but I’ll have your life yet.” 


BURNT POWDER. 


51 


“ I am Captain Jonathan Killbrag, of Sluart’a troopers.” 

“Iam Sam Spar], captain of Barksdale’s ‘brigade !” bellowed 
that individual, lustily, and glowering ferociously with his one 
visible eye. 

“ Come, gentlemen, it is a pity for two such brave men as your- 
selves to be fighting one another, when the cause needs your right 
arms in a different style of fighting. I have heard of the bravery 
of Captain Killbrag, and I know of the soldierly daring of Captain 
Sparl. Now ” 

“Malediction!” broke interruptingly from Killbrag. “While 
we loiter here, that madman is making successfully away with my 
adorable Ida!” and with the words, and sheathing his saber, he 
started abruptly off on a run in the direction the mad Hercules 
had gone. 

At the edge of the denser growth of trees he paused, however, 
and shaking his clenched fist back at the Mississippian, he ground 
out in a flame of hate : 

“ We’ll meet again, you brute of a booby ! I’ll have your life— 
but first I go to find my prize, the angelic Ida.” 

“Brute and double booby yourself!” halloed Sparl after him ; 
then, turning to the leader of the rifles: “Let him go. Ho! I 
know a quick way to find the girl who shall be — I have sworn— the 
bride of Captain Sam Sparl.” 

He clanged his sword back into its scabbard and strode to the 
sapling where the bloodhounds were tied. 

“ What are you about to do?” 

“ Flames and brimstone! I shall put these beauties on the trail 
of the demon of a man who carried off Ida Evelyn.” 

“ But pause, sir, to consider. The savage animals may fall upon 
and kill the young lady you say is to be your bride — *■” 

“Consider nothing!” was the snappish rejoinder. “I will over- 
haul that personage who is known by the title of the hermit of 
the hills, and— by the toe of Satan— I have an account to settle 
with him that these beautiful pups can cancel for me. Now then !” 
and as the furious captain said “ now then,” he led the hounds for- 
ward to the spot where the crazy avenger had stooped to grasp up 
the young girl. 

The glossy and fangy-jowled beasts were well trained, for within 
a few seconds they had caught the desire of their master, and their 
deep bay of discovery told that they were on the trail of the hermit 
of the hills and his captive, as they bounded away into the timber, 
vieing with one another for the lead. After them followed Sam 
Sparl, venting his satisfaction with a sulphurous oath. 

While this pursuit was progressing, with the sharpshooters 
beating about, baffled in their endeavor to see or strike the trail of 
the mad abductor, fresh waves of musket volleys were borne over 
the ridge to the spot, indicating that there was some new impetus 


DURNtf POWDER. 


52 

to the carnage at the front of battle on this afternoon of the eighth 
of May. 

McNeill’s brigade of New Jersey, of the Sixth corps, was bravely 
assaultiug the Confederate position. Shortly blending in the 
sound, too, was the din of the rout that followed the charge of 
Crawford’s division upon Ewell’s corps, that came marching to the 
field by the flank. 

Even above the rattle of the guns could be heard the cheers of 
tho Federal troops, as they fell upon the surprised enemy and 
drove them back for a full mile with slaughter, and capturing 
many prisoners. 


CHAPTER XV. 

AMONG THE TEAMSTER JOHNNIES. 

The delays which occurred when the Army of the Potomac cut 
loose from the Wilderness and took up the march toward Spott- 
sylvania Court House, were fatal to the plans of General Grant. 

The Confederate columns were really only in process of arrival 
to intercept the Union forces during the eighth of May, and the 
position of the Fifth corps was one of extreme danger because of 
the tardiness of the support which General Warren fully expected 
would have come to him sooner; an attack in full array at this 
time would have given the Federals the coveted point, and per- 
haps much of the disaster that was in store. 

With the exception of the shocks sustained by the van of the 
army mentioned in the preceding chapters, the gory field of Spott- 
syl vania had not yet opened its horrors under the skies ; and as 
night drew on apace there was a lull. 

Night found Lee again planted firmly across the front of the 
Union host. 

The ninth of May came in with less of bloodshed than might 
have been anticipated, considering that now the Array of the 
Potomac was in position, confronting the hasty though formidable 
bulwarks of the Confederates. 

The same sharpshooters we have seen mixed to some extent with 
the stirring episode of our more particular characters in the chap- 
arral, were busy during the day with their deadly rifles, and in the 
intrenchments of the boys in blue many a brave lad went down 
under the spiteful bullets sent among them from the ambushes 
afar. 

Among the victims was the intrepid General Sedgwick. 

It was during this day that a wagon train was observed from 
Hancock’s position on the right approaching Spottsylvania, and 
incidents that transpired in the vicinity of the train are of interest 
to us. 

Hancock was crossing the Po, under orders to capture the train 
if possible, and while the boys in blue were engaged in driving 


BURNT POWPER. 


53 

back the small force of hostiles that there opposed them, we look 
upon the road along which the wagons were slowly winding their 
way. 

The teamsters became apprised of the movement to intercept 
them, and their whips were cracking, their voices yelling, as they 
urged the fagged out horses on. 

Presently the foremost wagon came upon the body of a man lying 
in the road with all the semblance of a corpse. 

It was no time then to stop or drive around the mere body of a 
dead man, and in another minute the ponderous wheels would 
have crushed over the prostrate figure, when the latter suddenly 
gained his feet and tottered toward the coming wagons, with arms 
outstretched and waving in the air in a delirious manner. 

“ Water, water ! For the love of God give me drink.” 

And the one who thus called piteously for something to quench 
his thirst was Jacob Evelyn I 

Showing that the old gentleman was not killed, though terribly 
wounded by the slug that struck him down in the parlor of his 
home. 

“Get back there in the rear, old man !” shouted the foremost 
teamster. 

“ Out of the way there, old bloody head !” vouchsafed another, 
coarsely, and intent only with whipping up his spans of mixed 
mules and horses. 

But a third, more humane, and impressed with the woful aspect 
of the aged gentleman, called out : 

“ Skip into my wagin here. You’ll fin’ room thar, an’ all the 
water you want in a pile o’ canteens to the front board. 
Help ’im in, some o’ you fellers,” he howled to several of the 
guards of the train. 

But for the help that was extended him old Jacob could not 
have gained the inside of the wagon ; indeed, in another second 
he would have fallen in a faint from weakness directly under the 
hoofs of the snorting and galloping horses. 

Eagerly he crawled to the forward part of the rumbling wagon, 
where he found the canteens indicated by the humane but rough- 
mouthed teamster. 

In some of these was a more powerful draught than water, and 
though Jacob was a temperate man, he drank freely of the whisky 
his nostrils detected there, the potent stuff gratefully reviving his 
shattered frame. 

As he dropped the canteen, and as he was about to sink on the 
hard board bottom in an exhaustion that even the fiery liquor 
could not immediately overcome, the curtain at the rear was 
flapped aside and a man leaped in. 

A man clad in farmers’ gray, wearing a round* peakless cap, 
with two handsome, black eyes flashing underneath the rim. 

Norman McLean I 


54 


BURNT POWDER. 


“ Hush!” admonished the young man, placing a finger to his 
lips warningly. “ Jacob Evelyn, can this be you?” 

“Ay, all that’s left of in e, and I fear I am not to last long,” 
groaningly responded the old gentleman. 

“Do not talk loud, for although this wagon rumbles and creaks 
like some old house in a winter’s gale, we might be heard, and my 
life would not be worth a piece of Confederate scrip. Let me ex- 
amine and attend to that wound I see you have on your head.” 

He made his way to the side of the wounded gentleman, and us- 
ing water from one of the canteens, and his own handkerchief, he 
began to bathe away the smear of blood from the bullet-furrowed 
scalp. 

“ Who are you!” 

“ ’Sh ! not so loud, I say. I am a, friend. You have never met 
or known me, Mr. Evelyn, but I am your true friend, because I am 
the dearest friend on earth to your pure daughter, Ida. I saw you 
when you fell in with the wagon train, and noticing your weak 
plight, resolved to gain your side, if possible.” 

“What is you name?” 

“Norman McLean.” 

“ Ha! A Northerner ?” gazing hard up at the face above him. 

“Yes, a Northerner ; and you have but to make known that 
fact to those by whom we are now surrounded, and I will be shot 
down like a dog.” 

Norman McLean had escaped death from the revolver-shot de- 
livered by Captain Killbrag in a marvelous manner. 

The peakless cap he wore was a sham, and could be altered to a 
soft-top hat with a stiff brim, in keeping with another change that 
could be made in the suit of clothes upon his person. This change 
we are to witness presently. 

The stiff rim of the second hat being turned under so as to give 
the cap its peakless appearance had caught and turned aside the 
revolver-bullet, though the shock was such as to cause him to be- 
lieve that he was wounded, and at the same time it stunned him 
long enough to permit Captain Killbrag to make off with his prey, 
the beautiful Ida. 

At the moment he saw Jacob Evelyn amid the wagon-train the 
teams were pushing through a narrow place in the road and in a 
fringe of timber. 

By an adroitness that he had acquired since being with the army, 
he contrived to slip in among the Confederate drivers and their 
accompanying guards, his gray-colored suit giving him considera- 
ble advantage. 

Evelyn did not seem inclined to call out to those who rode near 
the rumbling wagon that there was a man inside who was a rank 
Northerner; and, in a momentary silence that ensued, McLean 
asked: 


BURNT POWDER. 55 

“ How did you know that I was from the North ?— and you must 
have heard my name before, to recognize that fact by it?” 

“ 1 have heard the name of Norman McLean before and on the 
lips of my daughter, Ida.” 

“Ah!” 

“Though she did not know it. Yes, I have heard her murmur 
the name when she thought no one was nigh. And I knew by the 
tone that whoever Norman McLean was, he must be very dear to 
the child who has been the idol of my life. I kept the secret of my 
discovery, knowing that Ida would do no wrong, and that when 
the proper time came, she herself would tell me of the man named 
Norman McLean. Because I knew that she must love that person, 
and because I would never do aught to bring Ida unhappiness, I 
have been a shield for her against others who have tried to win her 
from my side, even by threats. If you are Norman McLean, have 
no fear that I shall ever betray you to those who are your foes. 
But you are a bold man, sir, if you belong to the army of the 
North, to enter into the midst of foes in the way you have. What 
could have influenced you to this perilous step ?” 

“ Solicitude for the father of the lady who is as dear to me as my 
own life.” 

“ Tell me,” Evelyn suddenly asked, “ have you seen my daughter 
within the last forty-eight hours ?” 

“Yes.” 

“And she is safe?” hopefully. 

“ When I last looked into her dear eyes she was safe,” replied 
the lover, speaking partly truth; for he had not seen, after 
falling, stunned, the rude captor who dragged her away from his 
side. 

A nd the anxious father seemed to await the auswer with so 
much uneasiness that he deemed it best, in the other’s excited and 
weak condition, not to alarm him by any hint of what might have 
befallen the fair girl. 


CHAPTER XVI. 

SPYING INSIDE THE LINES. 

While Norman McLean continued to hold the conversation with 
the father of the girl who was his promised bride, the wagon train 
kept thundering onward at tremendous speed, with the teamsters 
yelling, whips cracking and the hoofs of mules and horses clatter- 
ing at a lively rate over the dusty road. 

It was almost dark, and though the frightened cavalcade did 
not know it, Hancock had abandoned his intention of raiding the 
train because of the nearness of night. 

“ You surely are not going into the Confederate lines at Spott- 
syl vania?” queried the father of Ida. 

“Yes, 1 believe I shall.” 


56 


BURNT POWDER. 


“ But if you are discovered and suspected, you will be shot as a 
spy. For my child’s sake, knowing that sne loves you, I would 
not wish to see you thus wantonly throw your life away.” 

“I will show that much confidence in you, Mr. Evelyn, to tell 
you that I am, iu part, a spy. I may learn something of the 
enemy’s movements that will be of value to the Federal com- 
mander,” 

“ In that attire ?” 

“No— this.” 

As the young detective spoke, he made an almost instantaneous 
transformation in his appearance that was quite astonishing. 

In a trice he seemed re-made iuto the semblance of one of the 
very teamsters that might have been driving in the train. 

On his bead was a soft crowned hat with a stiff brim, his long 
coat tails disappeared, and the color of the coat was changed by 
turning it inside out. 

A roundabout coat he wore now, which opened, buttonless, at 
the front and displayed a gray, woollen shirt; he tucked his pants 
into a pair of high boots at a single motion ; he affixed to his face 
a disguising beard ; and from some part of his person he drew 
forth a heavy cart whip, giving it a genuine crack on the bottom 
of the wagon. 

It was the knowledge that he could alter to this disguise which 
really had made him so bold in coming among the Confederate 
teamsters— a rough element that exceeded the ranks of the array 
for dealing with a foe if caught. 

In this masquerade he entered with the teams at Spottsylvania ; 
for, to tell the truth, he half believed who Ida’s captor was, and 
thought perhaps to find her somewhere either amid the encamp- 
ments or intrenchments of the gray host. 

Under the welcome cover of night, he moved away from the 
wagons after they were parked— first having seen that Jacob 
Evelyn was in no personal danger, and that he was likely to 
find humane hands to give surgical attention to his sadly wounded 
head. 

Early in the evening the venturesome Unionist found himself 
near an officer’s tent within Lee’s inner lines, and the voices he 
heard therein caused him to halt and listen. 

“The cussed Yanks have sent their cavalry right through our 
lines to cut off our supplies,” said one voice. 

“ Yes, blast ’em ! But Stuart is after them, and there’ll be some 
tall cuttin’ done when he gets on their rear ” 

More that Norman might have heard was prevented by the ap- 
proach of some one toward the tent. 

A tall form passed him by without apparently noticing him— a 
man whose boots thumped hard on the ground and from whose 
side hung a clanking saber. 


BURNT POWDER. 57 

This party flapped aside the opening of the tent and paused an 
instant on the threshold. 

“ Hello!” eried one of the offieers within. “ Killbrag, what the 
deuce are you doing here?” 

“ Well, and why should I not be here?” demanded the voice of 
the trooper captain in a surly manner, betokening an unbounded 
ill humor. 

‘‘Thought you were away with the cavalry sent after the cussed 
Yanks who have had the impudence to ride right through us.” 

“ No, I have been off in the woods west of here, chasing a lady 
who is to be my bride ” 

“ Chasing a lady !” 

“ Her name is Evelyn. You may have heard of old Evelyn’s 
place opposite Glady Run. She eluded me, however, and is now 
m the hands of some devil of a crazy man. I hunted until I was 
tired, and until I thought if I remained away any longer I might 
stand a chance of court-martial ” 

“ That is just what you are in a lair way of, % am thinking.” said 
one of the officers, significantly. 

“What do you mean?” 

“ Why, your company was to be one of those sent out by Stuart 
to attack the Yankee cavalry taking the Fredericksburg road, and 
not a step have they gone, because you could not be found. What 
will you do about it?” 

“ By the dragon of George ! is that so ?” 

At this juncture an aide came hurriedly into the tent, crying 
out as he saw the captain : 

“ Captain Killbrag, where have you been ? There’s the devil to 
pay. Your strange absence has been reported to Stuart, and you 
are a lucky man if you escape a severe hauling over. I have been 
the whole length of the lines looking for you ; and your company 
have been in the saddle since before nightfall — 

“ Malediction! Curse my luck !” growled Killbrag, making haste 
to follow the aide from the tent. 

As he went, he muttered: 

“ I am to be off on a fight, while that man, Sparl— ho! two or 
three other men— are after my charming Ida! May the fiends 
swallow my commission ! I wish I was out of the army, and I 
would devote my life to catching this girl whose father, whose 
dead father, has money stowed away in safe investments in the 
North.” 

He tore savagely at his long goatee as he strode along behind 
the aide. 

Norman had learned one important thing by this brief occur- 
rence. 

He knew by sight one of the men who were bent on persecuting 
his betrothed; and he had ascertained that Ida was somewhere in 


58 BURNT POWDER. ^ 

those woods to the west of the array where he had first so oppor- 
tunely met her. 

“ My move now,” he resolved, “ is to get out of this.” 

With this object he began to make his way from the tent iu 
search of an opening to elude the Confederate pickets. 

It was no easy matter to accomplish this. 

Throughout the whole night be was busy with dodging this way 
and that, and his previous experience in the Army of the Potomac 
now stood him in good service ; just at daybreak, he found him- 
self at a point on high ground overlooking the valley of the Po, 
whence he could see the blue lines of Hancock, who had bridged 
and crossed the stream and was advancing on the Confederate in- 
trenchments on the eastern bank, with Brook’s brigade, higher 
up, promulgating a flank movement on the enemy. 

Again there was a din of guns on the morning air. Barlows’ 
skirmishers were busily banging away at the foe, when there 
seemed to comt a halt in the advance, and Norman discerned 
what was, to his familiar eye, a movement of retreat in the Union 
column. 

Then louder burst the deadly guns, as the enemy, encouraged by 
what they deemed a faltering of fear, sent volleys hurtling among 
the Yankee front, and sallied, yelling, on the division of Barlow. 

There followed then a contest where the bullets flew thick ; the 
brigades of Brook and Brown right bravely met and repulsed the 
charging lines of gray, and once more, in the woods of Spottsylva- 
nia, Lee was exacting his toll of blood from those who sought to 
crush him. 

And another terror than death was abroad on that morning of 
the tenth. For in the variest heat of the conflict, a startling cry 
rung along the line of blue. 

The timber in their rear was on fire. 

Muskets of a hating foe iu front, flames of a holocaust behind ! 
For in the crash of falling and blazing boughs many a helpless body 
was doomed to perish in the sparks, the glowing cinders, the lick- 
ing tongues of fire ; and a sight more terrible than the battle-field 
was in progress there. 

Slowly backward drew the Federal troops, fighting stubbornly 
over every foot of ground ; while the ranks of the Second corps 
were thinning, thinning frightfully before the rain of lead that 
mowed among them, mingling with the roar of the burning forest. 

There were other shouts— shouts of grim gayety throughout 
Hill’s corps, when Miles’ brigade, the last of the hated Yankees, 
had been beaten back across the Po. 

While the Second corps was thus engaged in a destructive action, 
eastward on the line were booming heavier guns, volleying other 
sheets of musket flame, where the Fifth, and a portion of the Sec- 
ond corps, were storming the earthworks on the wooded crest in 
front of Warren. 


BURNT POWDER. 


59 


There among the cedars were piling more dead, heaping more 
ghastly sights of wounded and dying humans, as the Confederates 
repulsed, in waves of blood, the charges made upon their impreg- 
nable position. 

Artillery and the sweeping range of muskets in front of them— 
nothing daunted, when Hancock’s division joined the Fifth, again 
the boys in blue charged upward — charged to their death by thou- 
sands at different times during the day. 

Charged until the bravest there were weary and discouraged, 
and at last, catching the fright which pervaded the brigade of 
Ward, the boys in blue retreated from the hopeless struggle of 
Laurel Hill, seeming to defy the efforts of their comrades to re- 
strain them. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

NORMAN FINDS MRS. EVELYN. 

Norman had not remained at his point of observation during the 
whole of that fearful battle of the tenth. 

He must be upon the search for Ida, who, he knew, must be 
somewhere in those woods far iu the rear of the Confederate lines, 
and exposed to all imaginable dangers. 

He moved away, pursuing a course that brought him to the cabin 
wiiere we have seen him take Ida, and where the young girl fell 
into the clutches of Captain Killbrag. 

Feeling the need of food, he lingered here long enough to make 
a large sandwich of the meat and corn pone, and in his teamster’s 
disguise started forth with only the instinct of his great love to 
guide him in the search of the one so dear to his heart. 

It was a mere chance that led him to the ruin of the Evelyn man- 
sion. Here he met with a surprise. 

Standing disconsolately near the charred pile that once was her 
home, was Mrs. Evelyn. 

He instantly divined that it was she, though not knowing her. 

Advancing to her side, he said : 

“ Madam, do I not address Mrs. Evelyn?” 

She was a picture of woe, as she stood with clasped hands, and 
turning at the words, he saw that she was haggard, worn, her eyes 
suuken in the hollowness of fatigue. 

“ Who are you, sir?” 

“A friend.” 

“ Can you tell me where my husband is— what has become of my 
child ? A few nights ago I had a husband and a child. Both are 
gone. See” — leveling an emaciated hand at the black heap of the 
destroyed building— “see what they have done. They killed my 
husband, and they have robbed me of Ida. Am I going mad? 
Tell me? Look at me, sir, and tell me if you think I am going 
mad?” 


BURNT POWDEK. 


60 


Her glance was unrested, her eyes seemed to roll and fix half 
vacantly upon him ; and he shuddered as he admitted to himself 
that Mrs. Evelyn’s mind must certainly be deranged. 

“ My dear lady, I am sorry I cannot give you the information you 
ask for. But let me suggest that you had best not remain here. 
You are exposed to dangers in many ways. Come, let me find a 
shelter for you ” 

“ Oh, I have shelter enough,” she interrupted, swaying her head 
from side to side and pressing both hands to her temples. “ But I 
want my husband— my child.” 

“ Let us go together and look for them,” he urged, > wishing to 
persuade her from the spot. 

“You will aid me in the search ?” 

“ Yes. Come with me.” 

She permitted him to lead her away. 

Deep sorrow was within him at. this spectacle of Ida’s mother in 
such a pitiable plight ; for there could be no doubt that the recent 
strain upon her mind, coupled to her advanced years, had greatly 
unsettled her reason, and it would not require much more to 
plunge her into actual insanity. 

As they proceeded, he ascertained, by artful questions, where 
Mrs. Evelyn had found a refuge after fleeing from her burning 
home. 

And thither he led her. 

The cabin of an aged negress, whose wool was white, and who 
wore a pair of gold spectacles— the latter a gift from Mrs. Evelyn 
when Deborah, for that was her name, had been a slave in her 
father’s family. 

The but of Deborah was not far from the Evelyn mansion, for 
the old creature had remained near to the mistress whom she had 
danced on her knee when a baby. 

All alone she lived ; and in the humble abode the distracted lady 
had found a providential haven. 

“ You have brought me back to old Aunt Deborah’s,” protested 
Mrs. Evelyn. “ My child is not here. Let us go on. I must find 
Jacob, and must find Ida.” 

“De good lamb!” here exclaimed the voice of Deborah, as she 
appeared in the narrow doorway and saw who was outside. “Come 
in hyar, honey missus. Come into de inside, do. Who’s you, sah ? 
Is you a frien’ o’ Missus Ev’lyn?” 

“ Yes, aunty, I am her friend. And I want you to take care of 
Mrs. Evelyn. She has had a great trouble thrust upon her by 
divine will, and it is not safe for her to be abroad where the armies 
of rough men are engaged in a terrible conflict.” 

“Yah, hm! I doesn’t know ’zactly what you says, sah, but I 
knows what you mean.- She done tol’ me ’bout de manshun 
burniu’ downd, an’ fo’ de Lor’ I’sdone my bes’ to keep her inside 
de cubing *” 


BURNT rOWDEK. 


61 


“ And you must do better. There, Mrs. Evelyn, step inside. 
You are safe here with this good aunty; and if you will remain 
here 1 will look for your husband and child. I can accomplish far 
more toward that end if lam alone. Will you be guided by me, 
please?” 

Will you bring them to me, surely?” 

“ If mortal man can do so, I will.” 

With this assurance, she consented to remain in the cabin of 
Deborah. Having impressed upon the negress the dangers that 
might beset the lady if permitted to go forth again, he started off 
once more on what was a blind hunt for the lost treasure of his 
heart. 

Not far had he gone when he heard a strange sound. 

The deep, sonorous baying of hounds, and the short yelp that 
told they were trailing some one or something. 

“ Bloodhounds !” he exclaimed. “What can they be hunting 
here ?” 

The sound was approaching the spot where he had halted. 

Closer and closer it came— closer and swift. 

Stepping to one side, he swung himself up into the branches of a 
tree and climbed far enough to shield him from the observation of 
whoever might be accompanying the hounds. 

He had not long to wait as he watched downward. 

Presently beneath the tree appeared at a bound two monstrous 
bloodhounds. They were running with noses close to the ground 
following a scent,, barking, yelping, and at the spot were Norman 
had stood for a moment to listen, they suddenly stopped and be- 
gan racing hither and thither, as if something had occurred to 
perplex them. 

The jaws were wide and foamy with the exertion of a long chase ; 
the tones they gave forth were such as to indicate anger at not 
having been able, after a prolonged trail, to tree their quarry. 

Huge, ferocious, terrible to encounter they were, and Norman 
wondered what could be the meaning of their presence in this 
proximity to the battling armies. 

While the dogs darted about below he heard a harsh, bowel- 
accented voice, exclaiming : 

“Flay me! but this is strange. All day and all night, and part 
of another day, have we been on this trail, and not a sign of the 
lunatic giant yet. Ho ! he must have league legs, and his legs have 
a host of steam in them, to elude the jaws of my hounds— hounds 
that never before were baffled on a fugitive’s track. Forward, 
here. What is the matter with the dogs? They are thrown off 
the trail, I verily believe. Fury !” 

Under the trees strode the figure of Captain Sam Sparl, followed 
by two Confederate soldiers. 

“They’ve lost the trail, cap,” said one. 

“ Flame and earth, yes ! But they will soon get it again, neyer 


62 


BURNT POWDER. 


fear. Those pups are pups, let me tell you ; and if ever they catch 
up with the accursed hermit of the hills who has made away with 
my beautiful Ida Evelyn— Satan seize him !— they will tear his 
flesh until his bones are white and bare !” 

“ Ah !” thought Norman, as he looked down from an opening in 
the leafy branches, “ this, then, is the second wretch who is hunt- 
ing my Ida for his villainous lust ! I am glad I know both of her 
enemies now ; and if the opportunity ever offers I will settle an ac- 
count with them. It would be rashness for me to attack that burly 
scoundrel now, however. Stay!— would it not be just to her if I 
shot him as he stands there? I have six good bullets in my revol- 
ver, and I am a crack shot. I might easily slay him, and after him 
the two soldiers, before they could so much as cock their guns.” 

But while he hesitated, his spirit revolting from what seemed to 
him would be actual murder, the opportunity passed. 

The hounds gave forth a baying yelp that told they had struck 
the true trail over which Norman had crossed, and away they 
darted, with wide and barking jaws, promptly followed by Sparl 
and his men. 

“Come on,” the captain snarled. “I told you we would soon 
find the trail again. Flame and fire! if I can but get a glimpse of 
the demon of a man who calls himself, or is called, the hermit of 
the hills, I shall perforate his accursed carcass with every bullet I 
carry in my revolvers.” 

“And two musket slugs into the bargain, cap,” said the men, in 
one voice. 

The sound of the trailing hounds receded rapidly, and when as- 
sured that the brawny, bearded captain had departed in their 
lead, Norman descended from his perch and made away toward 
the ruin of the mansion again, as if some invisible monitor was 
guiding him on his search for the young girl. 

“Good Heaven!” he half moaned, with emotion, “permit me to 
find her and rescue her from whatever danger may be encompass- 
ing her; for I know that she is again in the hands of Callis Grim- 
shaw ; I know it by what I heard that rascal mutter beneath the 
tree.” 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE FIELD OF SPOTTSYLV ANI A. 

The afternoon passed without Norman being able to discover any- 
thing that would lead him upon the trail of the mad hermit who, 
he was now apprised, had his betrothed again in a captivity that 
might result in her death at any minute in the rage Callis Grimshaw 
felt toward the family of Jacob Evelyn. 

Nor did the burly, bearded Captain Sparl seem to have met with 
any better success, even with the aid of his monster bloodhounds, 
for, twice before nightfall, he crossed the young man’s path, pass- 
ing within a few yards of where the latter crouched in hiding. 


BURNT POWUEP 


When night had fairly closed in Norman returned to the de- 
serted cabin near the bank of the Po, in[a condition of mind deeply 
dejected. 

Throughout the whole of the next day he continued the unavail- 
ing search. 

Sparl must have either given up the hunt or found the girl, for 
Norman saw nothing more of the captain, nor heard any further 
sound to indicate the presence of the bloodhounds in the neighbor- 
hood. 

The latter possibility gave him additional cause for discourage- 
ment and apprehension. 

May 11 was notable for another lull in the hostilities of the two 
great armies of Lee and Grant. 

The latter was busy with preparations for a new blow, this time 
at the right center of the Confederate lines. 

A day of comparative silence it was — but the silence that pre- 
cedes a mighty explosion. 

The heavens became overcast and gloomy, as if the unseen things 
of the elements were affected by the havocs of the red carnage 
gone before and yet to come. 

Toward night Ihe storm had broken amid darkness that made 
the massing of the divisions more intricate, and added to the de- 
pression that had begun to pall upon the depleted ranks of the 
boys in blue. 

Amid the storm and darkness, however, they marched and coun- 
termarched— the divisions of Barlow, Brooks, Miles, Brown, 
Smythe, with Mott and Gibbon held in reserve. 

Long ere the dawn came stealing through the foggy air, the 
army was ready for advance. 

Forward, then, the men of Hancock ! 

Forward, too, the men of Barlow ! 

The Con federate pickets were driven in or bodily trampled down, 
and in the early morning there broke forth a ringing cheer from 
the onsweeping division, charging the works of the foe at an irre- 
sistible double quick. 

That ever to be memorable May 12 ! 

The bloodiest, most horrifying struggle of the war was now 
opened on the field of Spottsylvania. 

Resistless as the ocean’s waves came the boys in blue upon the 
hosts that lurked behind the earthworks. 

Hand to hand, inside the intrenchments fought the divisions of 
Birney and Barlow with the savage foe. 

Hand to hand, with clubbed muskets and prodding bayonets. 

Though brief the storming of the salient, it was bloody and 
terrible for the Confederate soldiery who were forced at last to 
flee in confusion, leaving behind thousands of prisoners, artillery 
and stands of colors. 


04 


UURNT POWDER. 


Sanguinary, and encouraging to the Unionists, after the days 
and days of useless blood shedding. 

The desired opening was at last made in the hitherto solid front 
of the grays, and Hancock had severed the right and center of the 
stubborn enemy. 

It did not end here. 

Smarting under the repulses and losses of the past few days, and 
eager to avenge their fallen comrades in the flush of a victory, on, 
on, swept the unrestrainable boys in blue ! 

Still the guns thundered! 

Still there was the clash of opposing steel and the whistle of the 
deadly slug, as on, on swarmed the victors through the forest, 
with the cheers and the cries of “ Spottsyl vania !” welling rousing- 
ly from their thousands of throats. 

On to Spottsyl vania! 

Not yet! 

Suddenly burst the booming throats of fresh batteries in front’; 
suddenly reared another wall of formidable breastworks manned 
by the Confederate reserves. 

Then into the ranks of blue poured volleys and volleys, until 
they were driven back, back to the captured line and forced upon 
the defensive. 

For awhile the Second corps seemed yielding before the assault 
of the rallied masses who were now in turn the assailants. 

For awhile the blue lines quivered under the galling fire and 
impetuous charges of the maddened foe. 

Then another volume of cheers— new cheers as the Sixth corps 
reached the field just in the nick of time to aid in hurling back 
the yelling waves of gray that Lee had sent to recapture the lost 
line. 

While the carnage lasted here, up on the air rose the reverberat- 
ing boomings of the battle that Burnside on the left, and Warren 
on the right, were pushing with vigor. 

Ghastly twelfth of May ! 

Loud beat the drums and shrill sBriefced the bugle blast. 

Volleyed the flaming lines of muskets— and above all the dull and 
earthquaking belch of artillery busy mowing through the double 
forest of trees and soldiery. 

Against the Second and Sixth corps Lee seemed to direct the 
fiercest of his efforts ; but the divisions of Cutler and Griffin had 
then arrived, and on both sides of the works, at times almost 
within saber reaching distance, one or the other, were planted the 
glorious stars and stripes and the stars and bars of the frantic host 
that sought in vain to recover the bloody angle of vantage they 
had lost. 

Memorable twelfth of May ! 

Like rain the humming slugs! Like billows of the sea, glinting 


BURNT POWDER. G5 

# 

in a slanting sun, the polished bayonets that struck remorselessly 
into brave bosoms. 

Piling, piling were the dead. 

Shrieking unheard amid the whirling Golgotha were the lacer- 
ated beings whose pierced and dying bodies were stretched on the 
rise of the works by the bayonets of Hancock. 

Hideous the spectacle ! 

But the day counted on its red-historied hours, and still the air 
trembled with the resonance of cannon, with the rattle of muskets 
in streaming flame and showers of slugs, till the very timber round 
was cut and toppled as by a reaper’s scythe. 

Horrifying twelfth of May ! 

Five times the startled general, Lee, had hurled his bleeding 
troops upon the Federal divisions that held the corpse-strewn 
angle. 

Five times they were driven back, leaving their dead in very hills 
to sicken the heart of a beholder who might not have been swayed 
by the emotions of valor and antagonism that possessed the Union 
army on that bloody day. 

Day and night— for far into the dark hours the struggle lasted — 
until the Confederate commander, almost in tears, withdrew his 
heroes into his interior position. 

Oh, solemn midnight, that midnight of the twelfth of May! 

And still the lines of Spottsylvania remained intact. 

A dense pall of smoke hung over the battle plain and lingered in 
i loudy wreaths around the tree-tops. 

Heaven seemed veiled from the frightful devastation there. 

The burly rogue, Captain Sam Sparl, had become lost from ,his 
regiment because of that futile hunt after Ida Evelyn, and when, 
in a raving humor, he had given over the search for her with his 
ferocious hounds, he returned to report for duty only to find him- 
self assigned to a strange company that was being sent to the 
works afterward captured in the early charge we have described. 

An additional wound marked the bearded captain after that re- 
treat before the charging boys in blue. 

This time a glancing slug had furrowed the other side of his 
shaggy head. 

It necessitated another bandage at an opposite angle with the 
one he already wore; and thus, with both bandages coming down 
over his face until he had to throw back his head and peep from 
under them in order to see at all, he was a sight of wounds and 
rage. 

“ Flame and fury !” he expleted, growlingly, as be thus walked 
about at a safe distance from the waging battle. “Iam blinded by 
the accursed Yankee bullets ! I cannot see my charming Ida, if I 
find her, without carrying my head as if my neck was broken. Pits 
swallow the Yankees ! Look at me!”— to a comrade more painfully 
wounded than himself— “I am a walking image of blindness; and 

3 


GG BURNT POWDER. 

of rage, mind that! I swear that I shall kill everything after this 
—if it be so much as a cat— which has a speck of blue on it. Flay 
me!” 

When night came on, the captain sought out the spot where he 
had tied up his fierce hounds, and taking them in hand, and having 
obtained hospital leave, he started once more for the viciuity 
where he believed Ida Evelyn still to be in the clutch of the madly 
roaming hermit of the hills. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

A TOMB OF FIRE. 

The Union army was now gradually massing toward the east of 
Spottsylvania Court House. 

That vicinity where has transpired so much of the early drama 
of our narrative was rapidly becoming deserted by the con- 
flicting forces; perhaps very few more than the inevitable ac- 
cumulation of stragglers remained in the chaparral to the west of 
the court house. 

The presence of these was, however, more jeopardizing to the 
safety of Norman McLean than when thedinof battle had sounded 
there. 

While his heart ached for Ida, and he would have dared and 
done anything to discover where she could be, he governed his 
love-born impulses by a reason that showed how injudicious 
would be an exposure of his person, which mieht result iu his 
capture and thus prevent all future effort in her behalf. 

He remained within his cabin retreat during the tumult of the 
day that was red and smoky with the fray at Laurel Hill. 

The noon hour had passed, when he caught a sound that caused 
him to hasten to the doorless doorway and peer forth— as he had 
done time and again since daylight. 

Several voices, loud and coarse, raised in half jest and half quar- 
relsome accent. 

Outside, near the bank of the stream, were half a dozen Confed- 
erates, some with muskets and some without. 

Stragglers they undoubtedly were, and badly they had been 
faring, to judge by their cavernous eyes and bedraggled garb. 

Within earshot of the hidden cabin they came to a halt, and 
presently Norman saw another of the gray crew coming slower in 
the rear, his steps bending under the weight of a keg. 

‘‘Hold on, there!” this last growled. “You think it is an easy 
job to lug this thing as fast as you fellers choose to walk. Let’s 
oall a halt!” 

“ Y-a-s, an’ bu’st the keg open, say I,” spok$ another. 

“So be it.” 

Then they congregated around the keg. 

A few minutes later the bung was forced, and the odor of whisky 


BURNT POWDER. 


67 

filled the air as one after another emptied his tiu cup full and 
withdrew to squat on the earth near by. 

“Plenty o’ stuff to guzzle,” remarked one, after a vigorous 
draught from his cup, “but nothin’ to eat.” 

“ An’ I’m almost starved,” 

“ I feel like ray stomach didn’t know where it’s been at.” 

“ It’s all very well keepin’ out o’ the road o’ the Yankee slugs, 
comrades, but one thing : we got some grub, few an’ far though it 
war. I’ll be glad when the fightin’s over, so we kin get back to 
camp an’ scrape up somethin’ to eat. There’s not even a hen 
roost roun’ hyar to rob.” 

“Ugh !” grunted all, in disgust, at the sparse foraging facilities 
of the vicinity. 

Again the tin cups were filled from the fumey keg. 

“Very plainly,” thought Norman, as he watched theorgie; 
“These fellows will presently be drunk; and in their blind stag- 
gering they may fall upon my place of concealment. I cannot 
afford to risk an encounter with them, while Ida is in peril. Oh, 
that I could find her!” 

Forthwith he stole cautiously from the cabin, crouching among 
the tangled growth until he gained its rear ; then he hurried away 
from the spot where the stragglers were becoming tipsy as the 
moments passed. 

But not fai had he gone when he was checked— not by a sound, 
but by a sight a short distance ahead of him— a sight that sent a 
thrill through his veins. 

Coming directly toward him was the mad hermit of the hills. 

The tall Hercules was carrying his left arm in a sling improvised 
from a lithe switch. 

Fortunately, at the moment Norman discovered him, he was 
gazing hard downward at the ground as he came along, like one 
who is bent upon following a trail. 

He did not see the man ahead. 

“I have found the abductor,” breathed the young man, sup- 
pressedly, and in a peculiar joy. “ I must not lose sight of him. 
And thanks to my knowledge of these woods, and the circum- 
stance which has brought this meeting about at this particular 
spot, I have the means of concealment at hand !” 

This means consisted of a huge log which Norman had frequent- 
ly noticed in his wanderings through the timber stretch — a log 
that had rotted away at one end until there was a considerable hol- 
low in whioh a man might, with little inoonvenience, secrete him- 
self. 

Noiselessly he sprung aside and crawled into the opportune hid- 
ing-place. 

And none too soon ; for at the very instant he accomplished this, 
the maniac overheard the boisterous sound of the stragglers’ 
voices not far in his front, and he threw his hoary head up like 


68 £ BURNT POWDEK. 

some animal who suddenly scents a danger in the surrounding 
air. 

Then his movements became as stealthy as the gliding panther, 
while he continued to advance. 

Into his glaring orbs shot an ignescent brilliancy ; he threw his 
tall body slightly forward like a crouching beast of prey that steals 
upon an unsuspecting victim. 

Straight on he went; and Norman thought as he passed the log 
within a few feet of its opening that the fiery orbs once turned to 
glance into the cavity discoveringly. 

“ Does he mean to attack the stragglers ?” the young man asked 
himself, warily watching after the herculean figure from the rag- 
ged edge of the opening. 

The question was presently answered. 

It was not many yards between the log and the spot where the 
Confederates were holding starved men’s revel over the whisky 
keg, though the intervening trees shut out a view of them. 

Suddenly there broke forth a howling cry, a screech that ended 
almost in a canine’s bark of shrillness and curdling tone. 

Following this a shout of dismay and pain from several throats, 
and Norman could hear what sounded like terrible thudding blows 
and the crush of bones. 

Mingling in the significent disturbance was a single musket-shot 
—a shot and another cry simultaneously, the latter indicating a 
mortal agony. 

Then all was still as the grave. 

Norman was on the point of leaving his concealment, when he 
was arrested by seeing the mad hermit retracing his steps toward 
the log. 

His brow was wild, and his garments wore splatters of fresh 
blood. In his arms— one of which was in the sling from the effect 
of the wound administered by the revolver of Captain Killbrag in 
a former chapter— he carried all the muskets that the stragglers 
had possessed, and over one shoulder was flung a strung lot of tin 
cups and pouches. 

From the loose bosom of his shirt were exposed more than one 
peace of garment stripped from the persons of those he had, be- 
yond all doubt, slain. 

Norman shuddered. 

“ Can it be possible,” he wondered, “ that this crazy being has 
overpowered and killed the whole of the straggler company ? 
What chance would I have, then, for my life, if he and I were to 
come to an encounter? Ha ! has he discovered me ?” 

For the lunatic, Grimshaw, had deliberately paused and stooped 
to peer into the black interior of the log. 

Then he unslung the articles he carried on his back and laid 
down the captured muskets. 

Norman, in an indescribable sensation of suspense, lay curled up 


BURNT POWDER. 69 

quiet as a mouse, listening to the almost inaudible footsteps of the 
maniac, who appeared to be busy at something about the log. 

With cocked revolver ready, he kept his gaze on the opening, 
expecting momentarily to see the terrible monster of a man come 
crawling in after him ; for he was sure those glowing orbs had 
seen him when they glanced inward. 

Round and about the log moved the hermit destroyer. 

And ere long the concealed man knew— learned with a feeling of 
shrinking horror, what was being done. 

A slight smell of smoke came to his nostrils. More perceptible 
it grew, until there could be no doubt that there was being a fire 
built around the log. 

Yes, the maniac knew that he was there. 

He was to be roasted alive ! 

That— or venture, for his life’s sake, from the only opening, to 
be crushed by a club in the hands of the infernal-minded de- 
mon. 

It would be impossible to describe Norman’s dismay at the dis- 
covery of his predicament. Brave and strong of nerve though he 
was, this dilemma, where there appeared to be no alternative but 
death, was such as to chill his heart. 

And now the smoke of the burning log began to creep in at the 
only open end, to stifle and smother out his life if he remained 
there. 

“ Good God !” he moaned, in a whispered gasp. “Am I to die 
thus? Death in here — death waiting outside, for I am doomed the 
instant my head appears to receive the madman’s blow! Ah! 
Heaven help me ! What am I to do?” 

Just then the harsh voice of the demon maniac exclaimed : 

“Come out! Come out! Ha, ha, ha! I will have blood— blood 
to fill up my cup of vengeance for the past! All, all, are the 
doomed enemies of Callis Grimshaw ! Come out! I am waiting 
for you. Ha, ha, ha !” 


CHAPTER XX. 

A NARROW ESCAPE. 

Truly, it seemed that Norman McLean must die— perish miser- 
ably within the burning log, or receive his death blow from the 
madman who was a foe to all mankind in his rabid lunacy. 

But a circumstance transpired just at the moment when the 
young man had resolved to risk a hasty exit from his burning en- 
casement which completely altered the aspect of affairs in his 
favor. 

There was a noise of approaching horsemen and a jangle of saber 
scabbards close by. 

“ Malediction ! Look, there he is!” sounded a voice, 

The voice of Captain Killbrag. 


70 


BURNT rOWDEE. 


The captain had escaped any overhauling on account of his 
previous absence from his company, because of his worth as a 
fighter, and had caught up with the cavalry force sent to fall upon 
Sheridan’s rear when the latter started out to cut off Lee’s source 
of supplies. 

The repulse of the Confederate cavalry in the short encounter 
that followed this movement resulted in a more careful organiza- 
tion, and while additional troopers had been sent forward, Kill- 
brag received orders to return to the vicinity of the court house to 
participate in the terrific engagement which the commanders of 
both armies saw was to come. 

It so happened, however, that Killbrag’s company was not 
called into the action which was at this very moment transpiring 
in all its fury, and, instead, he was sent on a scouting expedition 
to westward to make note of the Federal movements at that point 
along the line. 

And although the guns of Warren were then engaging the gray 
host on Lee’s left, and quite close to the scene of our drama, Kill- 
brag had resolved : 

“By the dragon of George! I am in luck. For I shall do no 
especial scouting except to look for my beautiful prize, the angelic 
Ida Evelyn.” 

To several of his men he communicated his intention, and not- 
withstanding they were of a material that would just as lief have 
entered the bloody arena of Laurel Hill, they entered into the 
spirit of their captain’s search for the lovely maiden he proposed 
making his bride, whether she willed it or not, and were on the 
lookout as well as he for some sign of the giant lunatic who, he 
told them, had her in his possession. 

Chance guided the persistent captain and his troopers to the very 
spot where Norman McLean was so unfortunately on the verge of 
his death, and as he came upon the singular scene he exclaimed 
the words: 

“ Malediction ! look, there he is !” 

The maniac wheeled from his hungry watch of the open end ot 
the log where he expected his victim to issue forth. 

He glared upon the troop of horsemen with orbs of fire. 

For a moment he seemed about to lanch himself among them. 

“Ready, here!” shouted Killbrag, to those nearest to him. 
“Ready! aim ” 

A dozen carbines clicked and raised to a level with the body of 
the maniac, who stood rigidly and defiantly before them. 

The troopers crowded forward, fifty or more, and as each man 
caught sight of the strange being, and their comrades about to 
empty tlieir carbines upon him, other carbines were thrust for- 
ward to an aim. 

The sight of his peril must have impressed the hermit. The muz- 
zles of the carbines were pointed full at him; the hammers were 


BURNT POWDER. 


71 

waiting the last command to fall and explode the bullets into his 
person. 

Quickly dodging low, and at the very instant Killbrag shouted 
the order to fire, he escaped the discharge and darted away into 
the timber. 

“ Malediction !” Killbrag snarled, loudly. “ Ready again ! Aim ! 
Fire! Bring him down! A keg of whisky to my company if we 
kill that devil of a man !” 

Again the carbines barked. 

The madman was safe within the undergrowth ; and as the balls 
hummed and cut harmlessly around him, he vented his peculiar, 
curdling cry, its tone full of a jubilant defiance. 

“Forward ?” ordered Killbrag. “ Deploy, scatter, run the vaga- 
bond down ! After him ! Malediction !” 

He urged his own horse swiftly ahead, breaking recklessly 
through brush and brier and dodging the branches that would 
have swept him from his saddle. 

The fifty troopers plunged in an opening line into the woods, 
flying hither and thither, some with drawn sabers, in the exciting 
pursuit. 

Exciting, because anon came to their ears the voice of the mad- 
man in its horrible screech of bantering mockery. 

In a few seconds the little space where lay the burning log, was 
completely deserted. 

Satisfying himself of this fact, Norman crawled hurriedly forth 
and ran for the cover beyond and in an opposite direction to that 
taken by the troopers. 

“Thank God!” he breathed, fervently. “I am saved from a 
wretched fate, though unintentionally, by the man who is one of 
the persecutors of my darling Ida. Oh, thank God !” 

The gratefulness he felt to the kind Providence that had thus in- 
terceded in his behalf, was more because of the opportunity it left 
him for continuing his search for the young girl who seemed to 
have so strangely vanished. 

Rapidly he kept on his course away from the glade, and shortly 
found himself for a second time in the vicinity of the Evelyn 
mansion. 

Here at the verge of the timber he paused. 

For he was surprised to see there the figure of Jacob Evelyn, 
standing in a sorrowful contemplation of his desolated home. 

“Mr. Evelyn!” he called, advancing toward the old gentleman. 

“McLean! it is you?” 

“ Yes. How came you to be here ?” 

“ I could not remain away. I received such attention as nearly 
healed my wound and brought back my strength ; but the wound 
in my heart cannot be healed when I know not what has become 
of my wife and child.” 

“ Your wife is safe.” 


72 


fctJRNT POWDER. 


“ Praise Heaven for that. But Ida ” 

“ Alas, I cannot find her. And I know that she is not within the 
Confederate lines.” 

44 Where can she be ?” 

44 It is a mystery which I must, which 1 will, unravel. But let 
me lead you to your wife, Mr Evelyn ; she is not very far from 
here.” 

Together they left the pile of ruin. 

When Norman brought Ida’s father to the cabin of old Deborah, 
they found Mrs. Evelyn on the rude couch there in a high fever, 
and not capable of recognizing her husband. 

44 De po’ missus done got de ’liriums,” said the negress, solemnly. 
“ I gin ’er some tea, an’ she don’ seem no better, Massa Evelyn. It 
must be she done gone clean crazy, I’s afeard ” 

“ Hush !” whispered Norman, as Mr. Evelyn stepped to the side 
of the couch. “ He is well nigh distracted himself, and if he appre- 
hends anything serious to his wife we may have two sick people on 
our hands. Be careful, and do not alarm him.” 

“Yah-m.” 

“ Martha,” spoke the husband, gently, and taking one of the fe- 
verish hands in his own. 

But only an articulate sound answered him, as if the mind, in a 
torture of pain, was striving to retain its balance vainly. 

“ Perhaps we had better let her sleep,” suggested Norman. 

“Dat’s wot I gi’n her de tea fo\” said Deborah. 44 Bes’ lef’ her 
’lone, Massa Evelyn.” 

They then withdrew from the couch, Norman saying, encourag- 
ingly : 

“ I do not apprehend that it is anything more than the result of 
her exhausted condition. The sleep will revive her and break the 
fever. I would like to have a little talk with you, Mr. Evelyn.” 

“ What is it?” as they went to the door and seated themselves on 
the rickety stoop. 

“ I am glad we met as we did in the wagon train, and that you 
were prepared to hear me announce myself as Ida’s betrothed. It 
will remove some of the restraint I might have felt in approaching 
a certain subject relative to my business in this neighborhood.” 

“ You came to see Ida, I suppose ?” 

“ In part— yes. But something of additional and vast importance 
brings me here. I am engaged as a detective in the North, and 
here in Virginia I am following a strange trail.” 

“Indeed?” 

“ I seek a man. It was one who was terribly wronged in the 
past ; so much so, that I know he is at this moment a wanderer 
and a dangerous maniac in these very woods about us. I wish to 
ask you a few questions which I am sure that you can answer.” 

“What like, sir? 


BURNT POWDER. 73 

“Concerning this man of whom I speak, and who sustained the 
wrong I hint at a period of nearly twenty years ago.” 

“Twenty years ago!” 

The exclamation was sudden and husky as it came from Mr. 
Evelyn’s lips. 

He turned his gaze quickly, searchingly upon the other’s face, 
and his features were of a strange pallor. 

“ Twenty years ago,” he'repeated. “ What can you have to say to 
me of events that transpired twenty years ago ?” 

Norman did not immediately reply. 

As he made remarks calling forth the sharp question, he also 
made a thrilling discovery. 


CHAPTER XXL 

THE STORY OF JACOB EVELYN. 

It will be remembered that when Norman showed the photo- 
graph to Ida, in the cabin, which was found by him in the arbor 
near Callis Grimshaw’s home in lower Maryland, at a long period 
after the mysterious murder of Mrs. Grimshaw, there was discern- 
able on the face of the picture, at the line of the whiskers which 
the original then wore, a mark or line like a delicate scar. 

We have seen the perturbation of the young girl, when she ex- 
claimed that the man who had wronged Callis Grimshaw must 
have been her own father ; but while she could not repress the cry 
of recognition as she gazed upon the handwriting of the faded 
note, she did not betray that she had seen more to point toward 
her father as the cause of Grimshaw’s woe. 

This other item Norman McLean now saw for himself. 

As he returned the steadfast gaze of Jacob Evelyn, he discovered 
on the latter’s cheek a mark that would agree with the shape and 
extent of the mark that was visible in the photograph, though it 
was less distinct now, after the passage of all these years. 

“Heaven!” he thought; “can Ida have been right in her sus- 
picion— and Jacob Evelyn is, indeed, the author of the wreck I 
have seen roaming through these woods? But it cannot be! Be- 
sides, there is both a likeness and a difference in the faces of Jacob 
Evelyn and the photograph I carry in my pocket.” 

“ What have you to say to me about something that happened 
twenty years ago?” Evelyn again questioned. 

“ Mr. Evelyn, let me speak as delicately as possible. I am search- 
ing for a man named Callis Grimshaw.” 

“ Callis Grimshaw !” 

The echoing repetition of the name came between teeth that 
were clinched in an inward drawn breath. 

“ What is it, sir ? I hope I have not startled you ?” 

“Startled me? Oh, no. What should startle me? It is nothing 


BURNT POWDER. 


74 

but a twinge from this hurt on ray head. Just look at it, aud you 
will see that it is no slight affair.” 

He bared his head and leaned forward for the other to examine 
the bandaged wound ; but the act was to hide a contortion of his 
pale face, as he was murmuring in his soul : 

“ Callis Grimshaw ! What knows he of that man — that demon 
who has been on my track for these twenty years ? Heart of my 
soul! I am innocent of wrong toward Callis Grimshaw ; and yet I 
am pursued, hunted by the nightmare of his sworn vengeance, 
which Ido not deserve. What can this man, Norman McLean, the 
lover of my dear Ida, know of Callis Grimshaw ? And he has said 
that he wishes to ask me some questions regarding an affair of 
twenty years ago— the very date.” 

Aloud he said, with an evident effort : 

“ You wish to speak of this Callis Grimshaw? What about him — 
whoever he is?” 

“ Did you not know him ?” 

“ What makes you think so ?” 

“That is an evasion.” 

“ Well, yes, I did know him ; that is, twenty years ago.” 

“ Did you know of the great suffering that was brought upon 
him at the time?” 

“ Yes,” with some hesitancy. 

“ Mr. Evelyn, I am familiar with the past of Callis Grimshaw 
and the item of the murder of his wife, after she had deserted the 
husband who adored her. I am on the trail of that man, believing 
that he has discovered the one who wronged him by first robbing 
him of aud then murdering his wife, and have a hope of extracting 
from him the secret of who the party is, if I am right in my 
theory.” 

“What is your object?” 

“ First to bring the murderer to justice; second to secure the 
reward which is still on the county books of Dorchester, in Mary- 
land. It is a snug sum.” 

“You will never find the murderer of Callis Grimshaw’s wife,” 
said the old gentleman, slowly. 

“ Why do you say that ?” 

“ Because 1 know that he is dead.” 

“Dead?” 

A silence fell. 

The thunderous boomings of the distant battle came to their 
hearing in dull quaverings on the air that was so solemnly hushed 
around them there. 

Presently Evelyn said : 

“ I think I had better tell you all that I know about that sad 
affair. I must, for I am suffering a torture that I cannot bear— I 
am a fugitive from the everlasting hate of Callis Grimshaw, who, 
I have learned, has sworn to have my life as the destroyer of his 


SURtfT POWDER. 


75 

happiness. I do not deserve it— I do not, as God is my witness. I 
never did him any wrong. But I know that he is insane, and that 
his mind is diseased with the one thought that to me he owes his 
lifelong misery.” 

His voice sunk almost to a sob as he said this. 

“ Let me hear the story, Mr. Evelyn.” 

“ I will.” And after a pause : “ When I went to reside in lower 
Maryland, I was a single man. I was taken sick, and as I had a 
brother living in Baltimore, I sent for him to attend me. He 
came. This brother was a striking counterpart of myself. He 
was younger than I, however. While with me he made the 
acquaintance of Mrs. Grimshaw, who, I must say, was a remarka- 
bly handsome woman. He went so far as to begin a flirtation with 
her, and one day gave me a topaz ring which, he said, he had per- 
suaded her to let him wear. 

“I tried all in my power to have him 'forego what I saw could 
only end in serious trouble; but he was obstinate. At last it came 
to an exchange of pictures. But as he had none of his own, he 
purloined one of mine from an album and easily passed it off upon 
the lady as his because of our remarkable likeness to each other 
and ” 

“Ah!” exclaimed Norman, interruptingly. 

He drew the photograph from his pocket and held it up to view. 

“ Is that the one, Mr. Evelyn ?” 

“ Yes, it must be. But I will not ask how you came by it— in 
the course of your detective investigation, I suppose ?” 

“Yes.” 

“ Callis Grimshaw must have seen that picture,” the old gentle- 
man added, “and obtained what he believed to be the clew to 
the foe who had entered his household. But to resume. It pains 
me to have to acknowledge that my brother actually won the 
affection of the hitherto devoted wife, and one day came to me 
with a scared face, announcing that he feared she loved him so 
well as to be unguarded, even ready to avow it if challenged. 
Not until then did he awaken to the sin he had at first plunged into 
with no serious intention. The lady was growing too passion- 
ately fond of him. He must run away, he said, or he feared the 
direst consequences. Luckily I was convalescing. He went that 
very night, and I accompanied him as far as Baltimore. 

“Remaining in that city for several days, I returned to my home 
to find that there had been a tragedy enacted. Mrs. Grimshaw, 
finding herself deserted by the man who had won her love from 
her husband, had fled from her home, and no one knew whither 
she had gone, until the day she was found on the beach with every 
indication on her person of having been murdered. But I— I alone 
of all the world knew that she had not been murdered. It was 
suicide! Nevertheless, I considered my brother the murderer of 
the unhappy woman. How do I know it was suicide? Twill tell 


BttRNtf POWDfcfl. 


you that. The first one to find her was an old negro whose hut 
was near the beach. The first person he met was myself. He had 
found in the suicide’s delicate and rigid hand a slip of water- 
stained paper, a note to the man who had driven her to the des- 
perate act in vei y shame. I possessed myself of it. The lines ad- 
dressed to my brother were pitiful in the extreme. I bribed the 
negro to keep secret the fact of finding the note. 

“ Then I suddenly came aware that the wronged husband must 
have found my picture, which my brother had given Mrs. Grim- 
shaw as his own, for he was heard to utter threats directly against 
my life if we ever met. For my own safety, then, I was obliged to 
flee, hoping that an opportunity might offer later, when he was 
not in the hot heat of his rage, to explain— if I could do so without 
implicating my brother — how it was impossible that I, who had 
so long lain on a sick bed could have been guilty of that which he 
attributed to me. But Callis Grimshaw lost his reason entirely, 
and I had no alternative then but to flee, flee on, flee ever, to avoid 
his avenging pursuit. Think, if you can, what misery I have en- 
dured all these years, with a mad Nemesis on my track, who 
might strike a death-blow at any unexpected moment.” 

Norman here opened and spread before Mr. Evelyn the letter 
which had also been found in the portmonnaie, in the arbor. 

“ Is that your writing?” he asked. 

“ Yes. Good Heaven ! how came you by that ?” 

Norman explained the circumstance of his finding it. 

Evelyn uttered a deep groan. 

“No wonder— no wonder Callis Grimshaw believed me to be the 
serpent who destroyed his home. Yes, it is my own writing. But 
hear me while I speak the truth regarding it.” 

Another groan, and a pause, as Jacob Evelyn, upon seeing the 
letter of such affectionate contents which he acknowledged to be 
his own handwriting, seemed even more deeply affected than during 
the whole of his recital.” 


CHAPTER XXII. 

THE BAY OF BLOODHOUNDS. 

Norman quietly waited for the other to speak. 

“ Yes,” said the hunted man,” “I can understand better now 
why Callis Grimshaw has hounded me so unrelentingly. That letter 
I did indeed write. But it was not written to Mrs. Grimshaw. You 
will perceive that it is without either address or signature. It was 
not intended for her at all.” 

And he added, after another pause, as if waiting for Norman to 
say something : 

“At that time I was engaged to be married to Martha Cheswick, 
my present wife, the mother of Ida. She lived in Virginia. I wroia 
to her often as I lay on my couch helpless in my sickness, and it 


BURNT POWDER. 77 

was lny custom to first ‘rough ’ the letters I meant to send her in 
order to have them both tender and perfect, as should be all letters 
written by a lover to his sweetheart. 

“ That which you hold in your hand is one of those ‘ roughs’— I 
remember it well ; every letter I wrote in those hopeful days is al- 
most engraven verbatim on my mind. It must be that my wild 
and thoughtless brother sent Mrs. Grimshaw that as an epistle 
from himself, and the fact of absence of address or signature was 
not surprising considering the danger they both were in during the 
period of their wicked love. 

“ I have said that you could never find the murderer of Mrs. 
Grimshaw, because he was dead — died long ago,” and Evelyn 
averted his head to conceal another pang that came athwart his 
face. 

“ While I was thus fleeing from the man who had sworn to have 
my life, and toward whom I was innocent of any wrong, I heard 
from my wayward brother. Not in his own hand, but in a way 
that cast a shadow over my name before the public. At the far 
North, in some popular hotel at a resort, he had deliberately blown 
out his brains ! 

“ It was after a period of sickness, said the physician whom I found 
at his bedside when I reached there. From the physician I learned 
that for a long spell my brother had raved mysteriously about a 
murder — about some beautiful woman whose name must have 
been Anne, for continually on the lips of the bedridden sufferer 
was the name of Anne — Anne ! 

“Ah! no one knew what I knew then. It was not the torture 
of sickness that had driven my brother to the desperate act of 
suicide. 

“ In his heart had come the terrible demon of remorse, tearing, 
crazing, until earth became a hell of torment to his loaded mind. 
It is ever thus. Wickedness must find its languishment and at last 
its fearful wages. 

“ But consider my own life, now that the only witness who could 
have thrown Callis Grimshaw from my track, even had he been 
capable of listening to reason, was dead. I saw before me a whole 
hunted life. 

“ With my family— for I had married meantime and sought the 
secluded mansion in Virginia— I endeavored to keep from mixing 
in the world, hoping that a kind Providence would shield me from 
the unjust vengeance of Callis Grimshaw. 

“Living in constant dread, yet I dared not move lest I make 
worse my condition for safety, and it was only a few nights ago 
that my wife spoke lightly of how easy it would be for us to seek 
some spot more secure from the devastation of the war. 

“ But she did not know— she did not know. I have never had the 
courage to tell her the secret which has made my life almost a 


curse- 


78 


BURNT POWDER. 


At this jucture both were astonished by a voice behind them. 

“I have heard it now, though, Jacob— nearly the whole of it. 
Ah, why did not you tell me all this sad history before? Did you 
think my love was not strong enough to comfort you?” 

Mrs. Evelyn stood behind them. The traces of the fever were 
still in her face ; but her gaze was rational, and her old eyes were 
suffused with emotion’s tears, as she bent and twined her arms 
around old Jacob’s neck with all the tenderness she was wont to 
exhibit in those earlier days of their love. 

“ I should have known this before, dear Jacob,” she'said. 

“ Ah, Martha, I did not wish to shift even a portion of my bur- 
den on you.” 

“And so you have ever been, thoughtful only of me. But we 
must take courage together, now. Your dangers are my dangers ; 
what you suffer, I must suffer, too. And we will pray together, 
Jacob, that God in his mercy will defend us from this sadly mis- 
taken man who seeks to do you an unmerited injury. But who is 
this?” turning to Norman. 

“A dear friend, Martha. His name is Norman McLean.” 

“ My husband’s friends are mine, too,” she said, extending her 
hand to the young man. 

Jacob gave him a meaning look which plainly said : 

“At present, it would be wise to let no hint fall that you are a 
Northerner, for Martha is a Southern woman, with all the warm 
love for her native soil which makes this wretched war so 
hideous.” 

Norman understood the glance as well as if the sentence was 
spoken. 

After a few words with Mrs. Evelyn, he suggested : 

“ Is it judicious, madam, for you to be standing here ? You are 
yet weak, I am sure.” 

“ You are right, sir. But I heard Jacob talking with one who 
had a strange voice, and, I presume, it was mere curiosity that 
enabled me to come from my resting-place. I will lay down 
again.” 

Supported by her husband she withdrew. 

It was now late in the afternoon. 

Still boomed the guns afar, and volumed the waves of musketry 
that told of the continued struggle at Laurel Hill and in the fronts 
of Burnside and Warren. 

Old Deborah had prepared a repast from her little cupboard— a 
meal that showed she was accustomed to living on mere bits and 
odds, yet there was enough, with the well made tea, to satisfy 
whose who were thus thrown under her humble roof iu the 
hour of peril ; and her black face beamed with satisfaction at be- 
ing able to do something for those who had shown her sq many 
kindnesses in the past. 

“ Dar’s de tea, an’ dar’s de pone wot I baked in de ashes my own 


BURNT POWDER. 


79 


self, Massa Ev’lyn, an’ jes’ sit you right down dar, an’ let ole Deb 
wait on you’s like she war ’custom’d to do in de long ’go time 
’fore Massa Cheswiok lay in de grave war de Lo’d done flung 
’im.” 

Plain though it was, the hearts of all were full of a prayer to 
Heaven for the mercy of the refuge they were enjoying amid so 
many dangers. 

Still there was a gloom over the minds of those within Deborah’s 
cabin. 

Where, during all this interval, could Ida be ? 

Darkness had come down, and Deborah had lighted an old lamp 
of rather unsavory flame, when Norman said : 

“ I must leave you now.” 

“ Where are you going?” Jacob asked. 

“ To look for Miss Evelyn,” he replied, cautious to avoid speak- 
ing of Ida with the freedom of an acknowledged lover’s address, 
as he observed that Mrs. Evelyn was listening. 

‘‘May God speed you in the search, sir,” said the anxious moth- 
er. “ Do you think anything serious can have befallen her ?” 

“ Oh, no ; at least we will not think it possible until there seems 
to be no hope of finding her. As it is, I have reason for saying 
that I know she must be somewhere in these woods.” 

He paused to examine his revolver, and then stepped toward the 
door to take his departure, when to the ears of all came an om- 
inous sound. 

The deep, sonorous baying of hounds. 

Norman had heard that same sound before in the chaparral, and 
he recognized the tones of the bloodhounds he knew belonged to 
the ruffian, Sparl. 

“Ah!” he thought, “the scoundrel is again abroad after my 
darling Ida. I begin to feel that if he once more crosses my track 
I shall not be able to resist the temptation to shoot him.” 

“ What is that noise?” questioned Mrs. Evelyn, nervously. 

“ Oh ! you have heard it often enough, I am sure, Martha,” Jacob 
Evelyn responded. “ You have not forgotten the bay of a blood- 
hound. Your father had a magnificent kennel, I remember ” 

“ Bloodhounds !” she exclaimed. “What are they doing here, 
Jacob ?” and she half started from her couch with a frightened ex- 
pression on her feverish face. “ Jacob, suppose the hounds, if they 
are bloodhounds, and I now recognize that curdling note which 
they make when on a dead trail, should fall upon Ida, who may 
be roaming in the woods. Merciful God, preserve her! Oh, Heaven, 
keep my child from the fangs of the bloodhounds ” 

“ My dear madam,” Norman spoke, soothingly, “do not give 
yourself unnecessary uneasiness. “ It is, no doubt, some squad 
from the Southern army hunting for Yankee stragglers in the tim- 
ber-nothing more.” 


80 


BURNT POWDER. 


The sound drew nearer. The hounds were approaching the 
cabin. 

The negress, becoming aware of this, seemed suddenly taken 
with an ague. Her coal-black face turned to a peculiarly ashen 
hue, and her eyes rolled from one to another of those near her 
Familiar enough to her were those terrible notes from the fangy 
jowls of the great Southern bloodhound. Well she knew the 
meaning of the yelping bay that told of a mad pursuit of someone. 
Her knees quaked as if she were the guilty one those hungry and 
merciless animals were coming after, and her hands wrung in her 
apron, and her few remaining teeth chattered in a shivering way. 

“De Lo’d preserve ouah souls!” she tremblingly articulated. 

‘ Dey’s cornin’, Massa Ev’lyn— dey’s cornin’ right hyar, I knows 
dey is.” 

And she appeared to be correct, for nearer and nearer drew the 
warning note of the swiftly advancing hounds ; louder became the 
noise from their red throats, indicating that they must be gaining 
upon the hunted quarry. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE TRAIL,. 

"Nearer and nearer the hounds, barking, baying, yelping. 

Norman stepped to Mr. Evelyn’s side, and whispered : 

“ I know the owner of those dogs.” 

“Who is it?” 

“ A man whose name is Sparl ” 

“Ha! Captain Sparl ?” 

“ The same.” 

“ What can he be after?” 

“ I know, but I have not time to explain. The hounds— the cap- 
tain— are coming here, that is evident. I must not be seen.” 

“ Bnt who could those animals be trailing here?” 

“That is a question there is no time to discuss. Certainly, 
neither you nor Mrs. Evelyn, and I hardly think this negress. But 
I must begone. There is no chance of concealment here, and I 
cannot run any risk that may deter me from instant search for 
Ida. I will not go far, however, and wait to see that the scoundrel— 
for he is a scoundrel— offers you no harm. Ha ! mercy ! that was 
a narrow escape!” 

For just then something passed with a swift whirr directly be- 
tween the faces of the two men, something that gleamed as it 
passed, and sunk into the opposite wall with a thud and a half 
ring quiver. 

A monstrous knife ! 

In astonishment Norman gazed at the imbedded weapon. 

But Evelyn had seen the source from whence it was hurled ; his 
glance rested on the one open window of the cabin. 


BURNT POWDER. 


81 


His face turned deathly pale, and a groan came from him. 

He saw a dreaded face at the margin of the sill. 

“Callis Grimshaw !” he gasped. 

And simultaneously there sounded the curdling screeoh of the 
mad hermit of the hills, as that frightful-visaged personage disap- 
peared from the window where he had been glowering inward. 

For once his aim with the terrible hurling knife had providen- 
tially failed. 

“ What — who is it?” Norman exclaimed. 

“My relentless foe, Callis Grimshaw.” 

“ At that window ?” 

“Yes.” 

“No matter, I must go through that window and take my 
chances. Chances they are, for already I have been near losing my 
life at the hands of that demon. Here goes.” 

With a bound he reached and vaultea over the sill, disappearing 
in the darkness beyond. 

There was not a moment to lose if he wished to avoid a meeting 
with the ruffian persecutor of Ida Evelyn and that ruffian’s fero- 
cious hounds, for now the beasts, with renewed hayings and the 
short, snappish sound that indicates a closing upon the prey, were 
almost at the cabin door. 

Five seconds later they were scampering around the cabin, 
snarling angrily and increasing the terror of the uegress, Deborah, 
who had sunk to her knees in the weakness of fright. 

The uproar of the snarling dogs continued around the cabin on 
every side, but they seemed not inclined to approach the door. 
Mad and furious they were at something that had evidently hap- 
pened to destroy the fresh scent that told they were almost on 
their hunted prey. 

Presently was heard a heavy tramp outside, and the next mo- 
ment there came a thumping on the cabin door, which Norman 
had closed when they sat down to the scant repast spread by De- 
borah. 

“Ho, in there!” roared the voice of Captain Sam Sparl. “Who 
is in there? Come, open this door, for I am half blind. Open, I 
say, or I shall first break my way in and afterward set my hounds 
ou you, whoever lives here, to tear you into a million shreds! 
Flame and smoke! Open, I say— ha!” 

The last as Mr. Evelyn threw the door wide open and said : 

“ If I am not mistaken, I recognize the voice of Captain Sparl. Is 
it you, captain ?” 

“Flay me! Mr. Evelyn!” 

“Yes, it is I.” 

Sparl threw back his bandaged head to look in at the old gentle- 
man, his bleary eyes but partly visible and savage under the 
swathes that we have said came down on his face so far as to nearly 
obstruct his sight entirely. 

“ Where is your daughter?” demanded the captain. 

“ Heaven only knows— I do not,” was the sad reply. 

“ Have you not seen her within a day, two days?” 

“ I have not.” 

“ Well, I am about to find her. Do you hear me? I am about to 
find her. I am tired with trying to win her for a bride after the 
knightly style. She is to be my wife— do you hear me? Fury of 
earth ! yes. These are times when I shall not take the trouble to 
go a courting. By the burnt powder of Spottsyl vania, I am after 
her — remember that. If you see her before I get her out of the 
hands of some abominable imp who calls himself, or who is called 
the hermit of the hills, tell her she is to be ray bride, the bride of 
Captain Sam Sparl. But what ails my pups? Curse it, have they 


BURNT POWDER. 


82 

lost the trail again?” and he wheeled away toward the rear of the 
cabin, where the hounds were furiously tongueing. 

That which now confused the bloodhounds was an even fresher 
trail crossing the trail of the mad hermit. 

The tracks of Norman McLean after he leaped from the window 
and made off a short distance to a tree, which he climbed and 
perched himself within, watching to see what might transpire at 
the cabin. 

Seeing that his vicious pets were in a state of bafflement, he 
stamped about, though careful not to further confuse them by 
mixing his own tracks with the new ones they were perplexed 
over, all the while venting a torrent of oaths that were shudder- 
fully audible to those inside the cabin. 

“Thank Heaven!” Norman muttered, on his perch. “There is 
no scent for them at the cabin. They are after the mad hermit 
again. And now I know that the crazed Callis Grimshaw must 
still have my darling Ida in his clutches; else why should this 
wretch, Sparl, be continuing the hunt for him. Can he have mur- 
dered her, as he threatened ? Forbid such a possibility, oh, God!” 
and at the terrible thought, his heart almost stood still. 

Just then the scene changed. 

Both hounds together gave forth a different, a shorter yelp, and 
darted off side by side through the darkness toward the river, 
whose waters flowed near. 

“Ho!” ejaculated Sparl, who came around at the instant. “If 
they lost the trail, they have it again. And I must be pretty close 
to that imp of a hermit who killed one of my men the other night, 
and whom I have sworn to kill in return. Good ! There they go! 
Do you hear them ? Noble pups they are ! By the time I come up 
with them again they will have found and torn into a thousand 
dangling strips this crazy bug of a man who has made away with 
my charming Ida Evelyn.” 

The burly captain, thus muttering, stumbled on after his thirsty 
hounds— stumbled, for the bandages which almost completely 
covered his eyes rendered him blind to a certain extent, and ren- 
dered him furious, too, for as he collided here and there with a 
bush or tree, he indulged in a continuous string of invectives that 
made the very air around him seem warm. 

Norman descended from the tree. 

He had resolved to keep within hearing of the bloodhounds, 
theorizing that they, being now apparently so close upon the rear 
of the madman, were far more likely to lead him to the spot where 
Ida might be than any search of his own would. 

Plainly ahead of him he could hear the bearded and foul mouthed 
captain following the beasts; and his stumblings, curses and dec- 
larations of vengeance for having been led a race of “ a thousand 
miles or more,” as he hoarsely growled, were a ready guide to the 
lover who came behind. 

But as he thus proceeded another sound fell upon Norman’s 
ears. 

The tramp of horsehoofs and the clank of sabers. 

“ Ah,” he muttered, “ it is the same cavalryman with his troop- 
ers, who so fortunately arrived at the moment I was about to be 
burned to death in the log by the same hermit of the hills I am 
now pursuing. They are coming this way, and will pass between 
me and Captain Sparl.” 

The horsemen were very near, and he was compelled to halt to 
avoid discovery. 

Into a little glade rode the cavalry. 

“ Hark!” spoke the voice of Captain Killbmg. “ I hear sounds.” 

The troop came to a standstill. 

“Yes, hounds,” he added, in a minute. “Now, I know who has 


BURNT POWDER. 


83 

houtids and who is in these woods looking for the lady who is to 
be my bride— Captain Sam Sparl, of Barksdale’s Mississippi bri- 
gade. But Ida Evelyn is not for Sam Sparl, not Sam anybody else. 
Forward! We will follow the sound of the hounds. Malediction! 
and if you catch sight of the man who is their master” — to those 
who rode nearest him — “shoot him down. Do you understand? 
Riddle his body with bullets, every one of you ! Follow me.” 

Turning to one side, he led the way in the track of Sparl and the 
hounds. 

The troopers were now between Norman and the burly, bearded 
girl hunter. 

Again the lover pressed on. 

“ I must keep near. For I have a feeling that one or the other of 
these rascals will find Ida, and she will need aid sorely.” 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

IDA’S CAPTIVITY. 

Night of May 12. 

It had been in the afternoon of the eighth that Ida was carried off 
by the mad hermit of the hills, when that weird giant interrupted 
the duel between the captains, Sparl and Killbrag, dashing the 
sharpshooters right and left with his powerful arms and the long 
staff he carried. 

Cunning indeed was the underground abode of the hermit. 

Thither had he immediately made with his captive, while she lay 
heavily in her swoon in his arms. 

Cunning the hermit, too, for he took a path wherein lay a long 
and upward slanting log, along which he ran to the further end, 
and with the agility of a huge ape clambered up into the branches 
of a convenient tree. 

While the riflemen, and Killbrag ahead of them, rushed past the 
spot he was making in a right-angle way, steadily but safely wid- 
ening the distance between them and himself, moving from branch 
to branch high in the air, out of sight because of the foliage. 

He used but one hand to gripe each succeeding limb; but the arm 
with muscles of iron, and the fingers, with leaders of steel, and the 
great feet, like the feet of a cat; glided surely over his mid-air route, 
until he was far from the locality where presently the baying 
hounds of Captain Sparl awoke ominous echoes through the wood- 
land. 

No wonder the dogs did not at once fall upon the trail of the 
strange being. 

Not until he had reached a point near his dug-out did he descend 
from the trees, a matter easily accomplished, so dense grew the 
timber along the course he pursued. 

Ida had not recovered consciousness when at last he dived down 
the narrow opening to his singular home ; and once more the beau- 
tiful girl was placed on that pile of ragged blankets in one corner 
of the earthen floor. 

It was ever gloomy there; the light of the floating taper in its 
little basin of oil was necessary to distinguish the surroundings 
with any clearness, and this he soon had burning. 

Then a heartless precaution did the mad being take against his 
lovely captive making any effort toward a second escape from his 
clutches. 

There were short pieces of rope strewn within the burrow, and 
with some of these he roughly proceeded to bind her hand and 
foot, and, during the operation, his eyes blazed down upon her 
with the dire hate he felt for the family of Evelyn. 

It was this cruel act which brought back by very pain the young 
girl’s senses 


84 


BURNT POWDER. 


With a start she opened her eyes, and gazed in terror up at the 
fiery orbs above her. 

“So you’ve come to life again, eh ?” he hissed. “lam glad of 
that. I don’t want you to die until you die by my hand. And you 
are to die by my hand ! Do you know that, eh ?” 

“ Oh, God. save me!” moaned the suffering girl. 

The thongs about her wrists and ankles were cutting into her 
flesh painfully, and a thrill of horror and hopelessness iced her 
veins, as she realized that again she was in the power of one who 
would show no mercy to those who bore the name of Evelyn. 

Tighter drew the thongs. 

Fiercer blazed the orbs of the hoary-headed hermit, and in the 
depths of his streaming beard his teeth, white and sharp, were 
gritting in an infernal grin. 

In pain, in desperation, she cried : 

“ If you mean to kill me, why do you not do so? What have I 
ever done, that you should wish to torture me so?” 

“ Kill you I will— ha, ha, ha ! But not yet. Torture you ? Yes, 
I shall torture, before I kill,- every living soul who bears the hated 
name you bear. Evelyn— Evelyn— Evelyn!— how I hate — hate — 
hate it ! And your father I shall crush in the earth till he moans 
out his life— even as he crushed my heart years and years ago and 
ground me down— down until I seemed to pass out of this world 
and into another where there is always and ever a seething fire 
burning here,” smiting his half-bare breast. “ Oh, you think I 
am a crazy man? Well, so I am— I am wild— wild for revenge; I 
will have blood— blood from the accursed veins of all who are 
named Evelyn— and more blood from the dwellers of the earth 
that has become a hell to me because I am a hunter and hunted of 
mankind. Rivers of blood are to flow — not by cannon or musket 
or pistol, but by these arms— these!” and he raised and shook his 
hairy, brawny arms aloft in a tremble of frenzy. 

Chill after chill coursed through the pulse of the terrified girl, as 
the wronged man, Callis Grimshgw, seemed for the moment 
transformed into a demon even more hideous than he usually ap- 
peared. 

Suddenly he said : 

“You are my prisoner till the time comes to kill you. I shall 
guard against your giving any outcry to bring another rescuer 
here. One came— you remember ? Ha, ha, ha ! Now, then, let 
me fit this into your pretty mouth.” 

With which, and before she divined his intention, he roughly in- 
serted and secured a gag in her mouth. 

“ There, you are bound and gagged. Ho, ho ! there’s no danger, 
but I’ll have you for a sacrifice when the right time comes. Now 
I must be off. I’ll come back to feed you and give you drink. I 
must have my toll of blood from those who swarm in the woods — 
my woods — my retreat this is, and I shall kill all I can of those 
who come here.” 

He was gone. 

How paint, how write the picture of the horror that settled upon 
the poor girl, thus bound and gagged, hidden in the cunningly 
contrived abode of the human monster who promised to return 
and murder her when he deemed it the proper moment? 

As he vanished, he paused outside to gather some rubbish and 
cast it in a disordered pile before the entrance, thus even better 
concealing his underground place of abiding. 

The dim taper in its basin of oil burned dully on, and silence 
reigned about her, till her overwrought mind grew giddy with the 
horrible thoughts that fastened upon her in her helplessness. 

The madman was in a strangely gay humor after leaving his 
burrow, which he did in the same manner by which he cauie, 


fcUftN'T POWDER. 


85 


climbing up into the trees and only descending again when a con- 
siderable distance from the spot where his captive was concealed. 

He could hear the baying of Captain Sparl’s hounds, and pausing 
long enough to locate them, he started off as if to deliberately 
throw himself in their way. 

This was easily accomplished, and then followed a remarkable 
chase, in which the cunning of the madman was really superior to 
both the speed and scent of the savage brutes. 

When night came down and Sparl had not so much as caught a 
glimpse of the man he was pursuing, the hermit returned to his 
burrow and relieved Ida of the cruel bonds and the gag. 

As she was freed, she fainted. He revived her speedily, and 
when she was able to sit up, and before she could find breath to 
utter a word, he broke forth, gayly : 

“ I have had a nice time off in the woods. But I didn’t get any 
blood. I would like to draw some blood. Oh, I live for blood! 
Now I will give you something to eat.” 

“ Water!” gasped the girl, her throat so parched that she could 
scarcely articulate the word. 

Just without the narrow opening to the burrow was a trickling 
spring. Hastening to this, he filled a gourd with water and held it 
to her lips, for it really seemed to her that she had not power 
enough after her terrible ordeal to help herself. 

Then from some receptacle he brought forth a supply of coarse 
food and pressed it upon her, though her attempt to eat nearly re- 
sulted in choking her. 

“ Heaven aid me!” she moaned in her bursting heart. “ Am I to 
be held thus for awhile, and then at last mercilessly slaughtered 
by this monster in human shape ? Oh, Norman, where are you at 
this minute? Dead— dead ! shot down by that fiend, Captain Kill- 
brag. Alas, I am ready to die too !” 

For she fully believed that when she saw her lover fall by the 
bullet, undoubtedly fired by Captain Killbrag, he was killed 4 out- 
right. 

Thus did the maniac keep her, returning at intervals to supply 
her with food and drink, and never neglecting to bind her hand 
and foot before leaving her. 

But she was spared the infliction of the gag; she begged so pite- 
ously, with promises to remain quiet and make no outcry with the 
view to bring help. 

The maniac, strangely, did not hesitate to take her word. 

But despite her promise it was impossible to keep back the sobs 
that forced themselves from her quivering lips as she lay there on 
the pile of blankets, waiting, for what ? 

The arrival of the moment when her tormentor would say : 

“your time has come; prepare to die!” 

Desperate indeed was her strait, and it was a singular circum- 
stance that Norman McLean, whom we know to be alive and filled 
with anguish at being unable to trace out his betrothed, had never 
once thought of looking in that hole in the ground where he had 
first seen and rescued Ida from the madman. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

TREEING THE MAD HERMTT. 

When the morning of the twelfth had arrived, Ida was so ex- 
hausted by the terrible suffering she had endured that she lay pale 
and wan on the blanket pile. 

“ Kill me,” she said, to her tormentor. “ I would rather die than 
endure this longer. Either kill me at once, or do not bind me with 
the ropes again. I cannot survive this much longer.” 


BURNT POWDER. 




Her mind was in a whirl, a feverish weakness, in which she 
really would have preferred death to the excruciating agony of 
the hours of bondage to which she was being subjected. 

The maniac surveyed her critically. 

He must have seen that she could not sustain much more of the 
outrageous treatment which he was heaping upon her, and, per- 
haps, something of the better nature that might have been his in 
other years for a moment rose uppermost within him. 

“You are trying to trick me,” he said, warily. “ You want me 
to leave you free, and while I am absent you will steal off.” 

“ Indeed I will remain here the same as if you bound me hand 
and foot, as you have done for days past.” 

His unexpected words had roused some faint hope in her breast, 
and eagerly she made the declaration. 

“ You are looking for the return of that one who came once be- 
fore and snatched you away from me.” 

“Hear me!” she cried, faintly, pleadingly; “ if you will not put 
those cruel ropes on me, I solemnly swear to you that I will not 
pass beyond that opening while you are absent. Only let me have 
liberty of limb. Oh, I shall die if l have to go through this much 
longer. Grant me this mercy, I beg of you. It is little to grant 
one who, you say, is doomed.” 

“Aha! and knowing that you are doomed,” he said, with a 
quick sharpness, “ you will fling that promise to the winds the 
minute I am out of sight, and spread your wings for flight,” 

“Look at me; do I look like one who could flee from you,” she 
returned, bitterly, and her voice almost breaking in a sob. 

There was no softness in the speech of the mad hermit, no re- 
lenting in those gleaming orbs ; but he saw that the girl was utter- 
ly broken down and incapableof carrying out a plan'of flight, even 
had she contemplated such a thing. 

“1^ I show you the mercy you ask— a mercy I ought not to 
show any one bearing the name of Evelyn— you will give me a 
sacred promise not to leave this place while I am absent?” 

“Yes, I promise — I swear it!” 

She meant the solemn words, and gazed imploringly up at the 
fiendish countenance of her captor. 

“Very well,” he said, in a slow and calculating tone. “ f will 
risk it. I will not bind you. But mark you, pretty babe ;” and he 
glared so savagely upon her that she shrank in her heart, “ if you 
deceive me, it would be better for you if you had never been 
born ; for I will get you again, remember, I will get you, and the 
torture you have passed through will be Heaven compared to 
what I shall then inflict. Do you understand ?” 

“Yes,” she replied faintly. 

A few minutes afterward she was alone, and for the first time 
since she had been the captive of the fiendish hermit, she was 
spared the cutting misery of the knotted ropes. 

The thunders of the battle which opened on that foggy morning 
where plainly audible to the captive in the burrow ; the ground 
beneath her was trembling with the reverberations of the heavy 
and continuous discharges. 

Once she ventured to the opening, but returned to the further 
side of the cramped compartment, murmuring: 

“Nay, I must not e\eu expose myselfto the possibility of being 
seen by some outside; for though it was a horrible promise to be 
compelled to give, having given it, I shall keep it, no matter what 
may transpire. Even if Norman came here to me, I would not go 
with him during the absence of the captor who has only shown 
me this mercy of freedom on my word of honor not to escape. But 
why do I speak of Norman ? Ah, Heaven ! he is dead, and I feel 
that I shall never see him more!” and giving way to her feelings, 


BURNT POWDER. 87 

she burst forth iu a torrent of grief, hiding her face in her hands 
to weep hot tears. 

The hermit was off on a bloody expedition. 

Both armies then being on the move toward that gradual con- 
centration more to eastward of Spottsylvauia Court House, only 
stragglers were to be found in the immediate vicinity of our 
drama, and many a poor soul on that day, though deeming himself 
safe from death by being removed from the vortex of guns and 
steel, met a doom at the mad hermit’s hands, to be named simply 
in the after records of the battle as “missing.” 

Coming upon the little band of stragglers we mentioned in chap- 
ter nineteen, and finding them in a condition nigh to helplessness, 
because of their over free imbibing from the poisonous whisky 
keg, he dashed among them, and, notwithstanding the uselessness 
of one arm which he carried in a sling— the result of Captain Kill- 
brag’s revolver shot— he flayed about among them, with his stout 
staff first, and afterward one of his huge and murderous knives, 
uutil only a heap of ghastly dead men remained as evidences of 
his presence. 

In coming upon this toll of victims, he had seen the Unionist, 
Norman McLean, just as the latter was drawing his last leg within 
the hollow log, and having satisfied his thirst for blood among the 
Confederate stragglers, he returned to carry out the diabolical 
plan of burning the hiding man alive. 

But the arrival of Killbrag and his troopers interfered with 
this. 

And as they were between him and his rabbit-like burrow, he 
was forced to flee for his own life in a direction opposite, hotly 
pursued by the troopers and the irate captain. 

During the remainder of that day, while the din of battle rolled 
over and filled with rumbling echoes the depths of the gloomy 
chaparral, the hermit’s usual favorable luck seemed to desert him, 
for hour after hour passed, and round and round he doubled and 
ran, and still some blind chance appeared to keep the troopers on 
his trail. 

Try as he did, time and again, he could not manage so as to reach 
the fallen log whence it was his custom to gain the tree boughs 
and escape through the air, as it were, to his well-hidden refuge. 

Night came down, and still he was being hunted, though he 
finally succeeded in putting a considerable distance between him- 
self and those who were scouring in his rear. 

“ Oh, that there were but half a dozen only — or a score!” he 
cried, gnashingly, shaking his bare and hairy arms aloft in the 
darkness as he plunged onward. “ I would not flee thus, no, no ! I 
am a match for a score ; and I could strike, kill, have blood, more 
blood to fill my cup of vengeance!” 

Then he suddenly dashed away with renewed vigor of limb, for 
a sound came to him that was more to be dreaded than the tramp- 
ing horse hoofs of the troopers who had been and were following 
him so persistently through even the intricate tangles of the 
timber. 

The bay of bloodhounds. 

The same notes he had defied successfully some days previous. 
But now they seemed to send a terror into his heart. 

On, on, he sped, at times taking monstrous leaps, hoping thereby 
to break the trail which he knew those sure-scented beasts were 
following. 

It was as he bounded onward after hearing this indication ot 
other and more to be feared pursuers, that he came upon the cabin 
of the negress Deborah. 

By slightly turning his hoary head, as he passed, he could see 
within the room where were congregated our characters. 


88 


BURNT POWDER. 


Then to a full stop he came, and his eyes blazed Li the darkness 
like the orbs of a jungle beast. 

He saw there the man he hated above all men on earth. 

Notwithstanding the nearness of the hounds, he took time to run 
back to oue window of the cabin. 

Pausing for a second to make sure that the party he looked in 
upon was Jacob Evelyn, he drew one of the knives from his girdle 
—knives that he could hurl with such deadly aim, as we have seen 
— and balancing it in his fingers, he cast it at the head of his in- 
tended victim, accompanying the throw with a dire-breathed but 
inaudible curse. 

Perhaps his excitement, resulting from the long and now danger- 
ously closing chase, had spoiled his wonderful nerve, for the whiz- 
zing blade missed its mark, burying itself in the logs. 

Not waiting to see the result of his murderous attempt upon 
Evelyn’s life, he again bounded forward, heading for the river, 
and hoping in the waters, to throw the baying hounds off the 
scent. 

When Sparl reached the river’s edge with his ferocious pups he 
showed, by his immediate action, that he was no novice in handling 
the terrible bloodhound of the South. 

The animals showed that they were well trained for the man- 
hunt. 

A few words of command to his red-fanged pets, and they separ- 
ated, one taking a northward course along the bank of the river 
and the other going southward. 

The first soon gave the yelping signal that told the trail was once 
more found, and after him stamped the burly captain, urging him 
on encouragingly, while he called forward the other. 

“ Flame and brimstone !” he snarled. “ I’ll have you presently, 
you imp of a hermit. I know that my dogs are close on you now. 
And they shall tear you into a million particles. I swear!” 

When Killbrag reached the river, following the sound of Sparl 
and his hounds, he called a halt. 

“ Dismount!” was the order he gave, in a tone and manner that 
savored very little of his military habit. “ And four of you 
—you four,” indicating those he meant, “come with me. We 
can accomplish our object better without horses now. I know by 
those sounds— for I have heard bloodhounds before— that the dogs 
must be close upon the quarry. And I know who is setting them 
on— another man who has laid claim to the young lady I have 
made oath shall be my bride. Come, move fast, here.” 

On foot himself, and followed by the troopers he had selected, 
he hurried on in the direction taken by Sparl, and where could be 
heard the baying, yelping savage barking of the exultant hounds, 
who seemed to enjoy the near prospect of sinking their massive 
fangs in the flesh of the one they hunted. 

Now not far ahead, on, on, sped the closely pressed hermit. 

Rage and apprehension were contorting his features, as he rau 
faster than any ordinary man ever could have run. 

As he begun to realize that the race must soon terminate in his 
being completely cornered, he broke forth in hisses, with grindiug 
teeth, and his fists clinched till the long nails sunk into the palms 
of his horny hands. 

The maniac, knife in hand, was speeding toward his burrow, to 
sacrifice her innocent life in his limitless thirst for vengeance upon 
the Evelyns. 

Matters in the timber suddenly became mixed. 

Sparl caught the sound of others coming on in his rear. 

They were almost upon him ere he discovered the fact, and a 
voice which he heard caused him to leap lumberingly aside in the 
darkness to avoid being collided with. 


BURNT POWbER. 


89 


“ On here !” snapped the voice. “ Malediction ! we cannot have 
much further to go, judging by the notes of those hounds— hounds 
belonging to a man I shall kill if I ever come up with him. 
Faster !” 

“ Ho ! flay him !” muttered the surprised Captain Sparl. “There 
is the trooper captain. I can’t see him, but I know his voice well 
enough. Fury and earth ! you will kill me, eh? We’ll see about 
that. But he is not alone. I must be careful what I do. Fat of 
misfortune ! he is now between me and the dogs.” 

Slipping out from behind the tree when the others had passed, 
he moved stealthily in their rear. 

Only a short distance ahead, the tongueing hounds were now 
making a furious racket. 

And in the rear of all was the lover, Norman McLean. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

NORMAN FIRST AT THE GOAL. 

Notwithstanding the dense darkness, Norman made a discovery 
which caused him to exclaim : 

“Ah! why did I not think of this before? I now know where 
the madman is making for; and a few moments of careful thought 
would have enabled me, long ere this, to find my darling Ida.” 

He had recognized the locality as that where he had first provi- 
dentially found his betrothed when Callis Grimshaw took her to 
his burrow abode. 

Now he pushed on with a hopeful heart — pushed on, but by a de- 
tour that would bring him to the hermit’s cleverly concealed home 
before the others reached it. 

Baying at a fearful rate were the hounds. 

Ida heard the ominous sound as she stood shrinkingly within the 
underground place, aud with nerves at a tension she listened, 
wondering if the animals would be likely to discover and pounce 
upon her, for she little dreamed that they were actually following 
a trail that would lead them directly to her on the heels of her 
captor. 

And while she stood, with one hand over her palpitating heart, 
suddenly into her presence burst the hermit. 

His white locks and beard were streaming behind him ; his eyes, 
ever glaringly fiery, were fairly blazing now, and he held half aloft 
the sharp edged and shining knife 

“Prepare, prepare!” he cried, hoarsely, as he came leaping to- 
ward her. 

Involuntarily a shriek burst from her lips. 

“Your time has come!” he panted, halting before her with a de- 
moniac scowl, though his teeth glistened behind his parted lips in 
the depths of his snowy beard in an infernal grin. 

“Your time has come. You are to die. Say your prayers, 
babe!” 

“ In the name of God, I beg you spare me,” screamed the recoil- 
ing girl. 

“ I spare none of the hated name of Evelyn. Hark 1 do you hear 
that noise ? They are after me. They will soon be here. But they 
will not be in time to cheat me of my vengeance! Oho! I burned 
a man to death to-day. I think he was the same who came here 
and took you away before ; do you remember him ? A lover, may 
be. He is burned to a coal. Ha, ha, ha! And I have slain your 
father with one of my never failing: knives. Oho! I am having my 
vengeance, if they are coming to make me a prisoner— kill me. per- 
haps. But before I die, I will slay another of the hated name of 
Evelyn ! Prepare, prepare ! ’ ’ 

With a quick step he was by her side, and rudely grasped one of 
her wrists. 


no 


BURNT POWDER. 


To her knees sunk the horrified girl, and another scream rung in 
the small underground compartment. 

“Spare me! oh, for the love of Heaven, spare me!” she cried, 
raising her free arm above her head as if to ward off the expected 
blow, and her beautiful eyes distended and fixed on the awful 
blade that poised in the relentless gripe of the madman. 

“ Spare you ! spare an Evelyn ? No!” 

“ I never did you harm. I am innocent! Spare me!” gasped 
Ida. 

Steadily he poised the knife, seeming to select the mark in that 
innocent bosom before him ere he drove the steel home. 

Another instant, and the keen point would pierce the shrinking 
flesh, the rich r ed blood would flow, and life would be over for Ida 
Evelyn. 

At that critical juncture something entered at the narrow en- 
trance of the burrow. 

Something that came with a fierce snarl aud yelp, and hurled 
itself upon the tall figure of the hermit. 

One of the bloodhounds. 

Outstripping its companion in the chase, it arrived first at the 
end of the long trail. 

Now, and in the nick of time to preserve Ida from the stab of the 
steel, it bounded like some huge and glossy ball through the air, 
and its fangs fastened deep in the shoulder of its hunted quarry, 
near the neck. 

Uttering his habitual screech of unearthly tenor, Callis Grimshaw 
turned to combat with this formidable adversary. 

Hard tore the teeth, from behind which came continually the 
surly growlings of the beast who could not be wrenched from his 
hold; and round and about staggered the man, giant thoueh he 
was, from the shock of the onslaught and weighed do wn by the sav- 
age hound. 

Twice, thrice his knife — the knife inteuded for Ida’s bosom — 
struck into the shaggy sides, and slashed again and again around 
the neck and over the head of the fast-holding beast. 

Not until it was nearly flayed into strips did the tiained animal 
release his prey; and when he did, and though he fell^quivering at 
the hermit’s feet, he still snapped viciously and endeavored to re- 
new the combat. 

Not much of a respite did the madman have when he was freed 
from the lacerating jaws. 

In through the opening came the second hound. 

Larger, fiercer, more used to combat where there is a resistance, 
was this one. 

With a cunning almost human it made a bounding feint, drop- 
ped short, and as the stroke of the knife aimed at it cut through 
empty air, suddenly it uprose like a rocket in agility, and the long, 
rabid teeth were sunk fairly into the throat of the hoary-headed 
Hercules. 

In the agony of that awful rending bite, the man for the mo- 
ment forgot to retain his hold on the knife, the only weapon that 
could have done him any good, and with both hands he griped the 
dog at the massive neck, striving to tear him away. 

Then down to the earth and floor went tnanand hound, ^verand 
over in the terrible struggle, in which the latter seemed to have 
the best of it. 

Fiercely tore the fangy jaws, through flesh and sinew. 

There was a deluge of blood and the sound of a voice that tried 
to cry out, but was smothered aud gurgling. 

Ida had staggered back to the wall, gazing transfixed upon the 
shocking sight. 

And at the instant when it seemed that the bloodhound would 


BURNT POWDER. 91 

tear the floored man’s head completely from the bleeding trunk, 
another form came in through the opening of the burrow. 

Norman McLean. 

“Norman! Norman !” screamed the girl, recognizing with an 
indescribable thrill the lover she had believed to be dead. 

She made a movement to hasten to his side. 

But Norman saw the danger to the hermit, and had reasons for 
wishing to preserve his life— at least until he could die with the 
knowledge that Jacob Evelyn had done him no wrong. 

Promptly leveling his revolver, he fired. 

Hasty though the aim, it was true. 

The dog uttered a yelp and let go his hold upon his victim. 

Wheeliug upon tho oue who had given him his death wound, he 
made as if to spring and give this second enemy battle. 

But the revolver cracked again, and down went the bloody 
jowled animal in the last throe. 

“Ida!” he then exclaimed, opening his arms to the eager girl. 

In a moment she was clasped tightly there. 

Only fora moment. 

Then Norman was reminded that there were other foes in close 
proximity. 

“ Forward here!” sounded a harsh, snappish voice outside. 

The voice of Captain Killbrag. 

Releasing her, Norman leaped to the doorless doorway and 
looked forth. 

Against the background formed by the waters of the river, he 
could discern several forms advancing toward the spot. 

“ Forward !” said Killbrag’s voice again. “ I think I heard some- 
thing like a struggle up here. The abominable madman may be 
strangling my charming Ida. Hurry!” 

“Halt!” 

The command rung quite unexpectedly in the captain’s ears, 
and he knew that it was not the hermit who uttered the chal- 
lenge. 

“ Hello, there?” he called, coming to a stop. 

“ Well, what is wanted?” demanded Norman, sharply. 

“Ho! Who are you?” 

“No matter who I am. What do you want? Halt! Notone 
step further, on your life.” 

As the young man spoke he was attracted by a cry from Ida. 

Turning quickly, he was startled by a fearful sight. 

CHAPTER XXVII. 

DEATH OF THE MAD HERMIT. 

As the hermit had rolled over on his back, after the hound 
loosed the hold upon his throat, and lay stiffly still, Norman had 
thought that he was dead ; and the sound of the voice of another 
enemy outside had prevented his making any examination to 
ascertain whether or not this was the case. 

Now, when he heard Ida’s low cry, he turned to behold the 
madman raised upon one elbow. 

At the moment Norman’s attention was attracted, the hermit 
was making an effort to crawl toward the couple, and this in a 
horribly suggestive manner. 

He had recovered the long bladed knife. With the knife in one 
hand, he was digging it into the earthen floor ahead of him, and 
dragging his body, weak from the loss of blood, in their direction, 
as if he sought, even in his dying moment to reach and kill the 
girl who bore the— to him— hated name of Evelyn. 

From his drawn back lips, he hissed through the bloody beard; 

“ Vengeance ! I will have my vengeance }” 


32 


BURNT POWDER. 


“ Callis Grimshaw, hold there. Here me for a word ” 

“ Who calls Callis Grimshaw ?” demanded the maniac, frenziedly. 

‘‘I do. Listen to me. You are wrong in your hate of Jacob 
Evelyn. He never did you harm ” 

“A lie! A lie, Isay! Jacob Evelyn it was who destroyed my 
home and drove me from the haunts of men to become a beast, a 
wanderer on the face of the earth, to hide in a hole like the hunted 
fox, A lie, Isay!” 

“ Before high Heaven I swear that you are wrong. If you will 
hear me for a minute, I can convince you ” 

“ I have no minutes to spare. I am dying— and before I die I 
will have the blood of another Evelyn!” again interrupted the 
unfortunate crazy man. 

Whatever Norman might have said further, it was prevented by 
a call from Captain Killbrag. 

“ Ho, there! Well, 1 have halted as you commanded. But I shall 
not stay here long, mind that. Malediction ! I am after a lady 
who was carried off by a lunatic who is, I think, in where you are, 
whoever you are. And by the dragon of George, I will have her. 
Is she in there?” 

‘‘There is a lady here, and I am her protector, remember that.” 

“ Her protector? Ho! and who the devil may you be, anyhow ?” 

“One whom you had best not tempt too far by offering her 
harm. Begone from here, or I shall let drive a bullet into you!” 

Norman spoke in a tone that could not be mistaken for an idle 
threat; and the captain appeared to comprehend it, for he lost no 
time in sheltering his body behind a convenient tree, after which 
precaution he called out again : 

“You, up there?” 

“Well?” 

“ Do you know who I am ?” 

“Yes. Captain Jonathan Killbrag, of Stuart’s cavalry. A cow- 
ardly villain and woman hunter.” 

At this bold rejoinder the captain uttered a rageful cry. 

But he kept his precious body well out of sight. 

“Do not anger him unnecessarily, Norman,” Ida said. 

“I do not fear him, nor all the troop he has with him,” returned 
the lover, who half felt that he had played the coward himself in 
more than one instance since he first met his betrothed in not hav 
ing protected her from the danger in which he had now again 
found her. 

The hotter blood of his nature was getting the better of his 
will. 

“Have no fear, Ida,” he said. “We can beat back the whole 
troop of this Captain Killbrag. And if he tarries here very long, 
in the vain hope of starving us out, I may prophesy that he will 
find himself a prisoner within the lines of the Union army.” 

Both were attracted again at this juncture to the hermit. 

Callis Grimshaw vented a sound that was a combined gasp and 
grunt, and then rolled out full length and rigid upon the floor. 

“ He is dead,” the young man said. 

Ida averted her head with a shudder. 

“Malediction!” snapped the voice of Captain Killbrag, outside. 
“ Are you going to give me the young lady I know is in that pest 
of a hole?” 

“ I will give you a shower of bullets if you attempt to come so 
much as a yard nearer,” was the lover’s reply. 

This set Killbrag to thinking. 

A shower of bullets. Whoever this champion might be, then, he 
could not be alone. 

Else how could he send a “ shower of bullets,” Then be criecf tQ 

his men : 


BURNT POWDER. 


93 


“ One of you go back to the rest of the company. Bring them all 
here. Malediction ! 1 will rout this man and whoever is with him 
out of that in a twinkling. Hasten !” 

And he called out to Norman : 

“ You hear ? I have sent after a whole troop. In a few minutes I 
will drag you out of there. And I shall skin you alive, I promise 
you that.” 

“Try it,” retorted the young man, bravely. 

And he said, to Ida: 

“ Briug me those revolvers I see sticking from the belt of yonder 
dead man, if you have the nerve ” 

She started to obey almost before he had finished. 

Norman presently found himself armed with five heavy revolvers 
besides his own trusty weapon, and as he counted the chambers he 
murmured: 

“There are enough bullets here to lay out a whole troop, if I am 
careful to make every shot tell, and if they do uot all charge at 
once. And even if they do charge all at once, not more than two 
at a time can enter at this opening ; so I think 1 will pile up a ram- 
part of dead men before they get us, Ida.” 

“Oh, Norman, how terrible!” she exclaimed, suppressedly, 
glancing into his grim face not without some misgivings for the 
end of this scene. 

Hardly had she uttered the words, when there was a report and 
a carbine bullet went whizzing past their heads. 

“ Ah, I forgot; the light !” 

Stepping back, he blew the flame of the taper out at a whiff. 

“ I should have thought of that before. We have been in great 
danger. Now we are safe, if we keep out of range through the 
opening, and we can see our enemies better, too.” 

A moment after he exclaimed hurriedly: 

“Look! the woods are on fire !” 

There was a dull glare suddenly in the sky overhead, as from a 
fire that seemed to grow brighter every second. 

A commotion was visible among the besiegers. 

“ We’d best be getting out of this, captain,” Norman heard one 
of the troopers say. 

“ Malediction !” gritted the voice of Killbrag. “ Yes, we will be 
burned alive if we stay. But I hate to let that girl slip through 
my fingers when I almost have her.” 

Then Norman could discern their figures moving away toward 
the river. 

Brighter grew the glare in the heavens. 

“Norman,” Ida’s voice was trembling, “is it true? Are the 
woods on fire ?” 

“ I fear so.” 

“ What will become of us here ?” 

“Have faith in the goodness of Heaven. See, yonder are some 
blankets. Bring them to me.” 

When she had brought the ragged blankets to him, he first 
peered cautiously forth to see if the troopers were in sight, then 
he glided from the opening. 

“Norman,” she called, with some apprehension, “ where are you 
going? Do not leave me ” 

“ ’Sh ! Be still. I am not going away,” and he disappeared. 

Only for a few moments, and when he joined her, he carried the 
blankets on his arm, dripping with water from the spring so fortu- 
nately close by. 

His object was soon apparent. 

With her aid he fastened the wet blankets closely across the 
small opening, saying : 

“ That will keep out the smoke, I do not think the heat will 


94 


BURNT POWDEE. 


penetrate here. The gourd I saw ; can you find it ? We may need 
water to drink. The fire is sweeping this way, Ida; but fear not, 
I think we are safe.” 

With the gourd tilled with water and the blankets hung and 
dripping, they waited the coming of the fire, 

Soon the roar of the flames could be heard, then louder, as the 
torrent came upon the spot in a mighty surge. 

But the furious element spent itself at the river side, and only 
the fall of brancnes sounded without, crackling as they crashed to 
the ground in a blazing scatter of sparks. 

“It is over — the worst,” the lover said ; and he was rising from 
the corner whither they had withdrawn when there was an oc- 
currence of a most startling character. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

A TRIUMPH OF HEARTS. 

Into the presence of Norman and Ida dashed something that 
was hardly distinguishable as a mau at first— a human being whose 
hair, beard and garments were entirely ablaze. 

A very pyramid of fire he seemed, with sparks flying in every 
direction, and the envelopment of the smoke almost hiding the 
upper portion of his body. 

Out from the depths of this frightfully burning object issued a 
cry that was a howl of intense agony and terror. 

“ Ho ! fury and earth ! I am burning up ! I am a dead man ! I am 
swallowing flame and smoke ! Help ! Save me, somebody !” 

The last words were a shriek in a hoarse, bellowing accent. 

It was Captain Sam Sparl. 

As the two stood for a moment transfixed by the shudderful 
sight of the consuming man, Sparl reeled about blindly, roaring 
and gasping, then fell in a blazing heap upon the floor. 

Groan after groan came from his scorched lips. 

A hideous spectacle of death ! 

He had been caught in the burning woods. 

He had been a hidden listener to the short syllabled dialogue be- 
tween Captain Killbrag and the party, unknown to him, within 
the secret cave of the hermit. 

When Killbrag and his trooper companions drew off to escape 
the coming fire, Sparl had no alternative but to flee directly into 
the onward surging element, or follow after and into their 
midst. 

Soooping with his sword a hollow at the roots of a large tree, he 
had half buried himself in the hope that he could survive ; but it 
was a vain and foolish hope, for he was soon overcome nigh to 
death, and at last, encompassed by a sheet of flame, he bounded 
up, resolved to dare an encounter with whoever was in the bur- 
row. 

But by the time ne nad found the narrow opening affording an 
entrance to it, he had inhaled the fire, and knew that he was a 
dead man. 

So much had he inhaled, that he expired in a few minutes, 
though Norman, in merest humanity, endeavored to relieve the 
suffering man* who was a foe to him and the young girl so dear to 
his heart. 

A miserable death for Captain Sparl. 

Norman, glancing around upon the dead bodies of the hermit, 
the two hounds, and the scarcely recognized Sparl— for he had re- 
lighted the taper— said : 

Come, Ida, let us go away from this sight. It is sickening to 

me.”* ^ 

ti ls it sa fe for,us t o .venture fo rth ?” 


BURNT POWDER. 


95 


“ I really believe that no better opportunity could be afforded 
than now. The troopers have no doubt been driven some dis- 
tance from here ; by the time the furthest limit of the tire has 
reached where they are, this vicinity will permit of our traversing 
it. Come.” 

Hand in hand they passed out. 

A wreck of forest was before them. 

Where so shortly previous had been a rich and beautiful stretch 
of verdure, was now only a charred waste, wherein glowed the 
lingering embers of the stripped and blackened trees, round which 
still licked the stray and darting flames. 

Fortunately, the belt of the fire had been limited. 

They had not far to go to get out of the heated atmosphere. 

But as the flames had made a turn in the impetus of their sweep 
down stream, Killbrag and his men had been obliged to go, as Nor- 
man predicted, a considerable distance to save themselves from 
being engulfed. 

When it was safe to return, the trooper captain hastened back 
to his former position near the burrow. 

“Hello!” he called. “Are you alive up there?” 

There was no response, of course ; for Norman and Ida were then 
nearly a mile away from the spot. 

“ Malediction ! have you come safely out of this abominable fire? 
Speak, you, up there in that hole!” he shouted again. 

Still no response. 

“ They are either dead, or ” 

An idea of an annoying possibility came to him. 

“What if they have both survived and made off?” he questioned 
himself, with an oath. “By the dragon of George ! I will soon 
know. Yes.” 

At this juncture his troopers, till now kept back by the fire, 
came up. 

Striding forward to the cavalcade he gave some quick orders, and 
a score of the men threw themselves from their saddles, drawing 
their sabers as if about to charge a large and ambushed foe. 

After a few words more, Killbrag did cry : 

“Charge! Now, then, charge!” 

Up over the slight rise of ground, over embers and burning sod 
rushed pell-mell the troopers toward the burrow. 

They reached and crowded into the place, where the dull taper 
burned in its basin of oil. 

Only the corpses which we know to have been there met their 
gaze, as one after another crowded in at the opening until the 
small compartment was full to a jam. 

Last of all came Captain Killbrag. 

The warmth of the air without was scarcely greater than the heat 
of his oaths of chagrin and rage when he realized that his prey had 
escaped. 

“Boots and saddles!” he vociferated. “Malediction! After 
them ! After the girl who is to be my bride ! After the man, who- 
ever he may be, who is aiding her to elude me! Satan! if you 
catch the latter, a pile of money to the one who cuts off his ears! 
A pile of money to the one who brings me his eyes on a saber 
point » A pile of money to the one who chops off his. arms and legs, 
who skins him alive, who Malediction ! be off ! Follow me!” 

In a frenzy of barbarous rage he led the way back to the horses, 
and, at another command, the troopers separated into pairs and 
trios to hunt the fleeing couple. _ _ _ . . . 

No tracks were there in that dismantled woods. No clew to the 
course pursued by the devoted lovers. 

Though Killbrag and his men hunted like animals, with eye and 
ear Providence guided Norman and Ida safely away from the en- 


96 


burnt powder. 


viron of danger, toward the cabin where the father and mother, 
with auxious hearts, were in prayerful waiting for some tidings of 
their child. 

“ I have confidence in Mr. McLean,” the old gentleman had said 
to his wife. “ I believe he will find Ida if mortal man can 
do so.” 

“ And why are you so confident in him, Jacob ? Who is this Mr. 
McLean ? I have never heard of him before, and yet you seem to 
know him well.” 

For a few moments Jacob hesitated. 

Then he said : 

‘‘I will tell you, Martha, who he is.” 

As Mrs. Evelyn lay there on the couch, listening with a grave 
interest, he told what he knew of the former meeting of Ida and 
Norman in the North, and their secret betrothal. 

“I have so much faith in the goodness of our daughter,” he 
said, in conclusion, “ that I must believe Mr. McLean to be a man 
of integrity. He is, too, connected with a prominent detective 
firm in Philadelphia he tells me, and his standing is, therefore, 
open to the fullest investigation.” 

“ But he is a Northerner, Jacob.” 

‘‘Ah, Martha, I am sure you love our Ida too well to allow so 
small a matter as that to interfere with her happiness.” 

‘‘Love her!” repeated the mother, with emotion. “ Oh, Jacob, 
if Heaven will only give her back to me.” 

Little could she dream that at that very moment Ida was 
speeding toward her, eager to be embraced once more by the lov- 
ing arms. 

Suddenly into the cabin ran a female form, and a dear, familiar 
voice cried, broken with a great sob : 

‘‘Father— mother!” 

‘‘Ida! my child !” burst from both the overjoyed parents. 

“ Bress de lamb ’r Israel, she done come at las’ !” croned old De- 
borah, throwing up her black hands and partaking of the glad- 
ness of the others. 

Close behind came Norman. 

When the parents had embraced the recovered loved one, Jacob 
Evelyn advanced and grasped Norman’s hand : 

“ May God bless you, sir,” he said. 

Mrs. Evelyn, ignoring the fact that the young man was one of 
those whom she hated as she did all who were of the North, also 
extended a hand, adding to her husband’s words : 

“Amen to that.” 

But no time was to be lost there. 

The woods were full of those who were enemies to Norman, and 
the dreaded Captain Killbrag was prosecuting his search for the 
young girl he was determined to make his wife, or, mayhap, 
worse. 

As Mrs. Evelyn persisted that she was capable of some exertion, 
they left Deborah’s cabin just before daybreak, and crossed the 
Po, going cautiously northward. 

Of the trials they endured in making their way to absolute 
safety— which they at last found in the city of Washington— we 
need 'make no detail at this late paragraph. 

Safe they finally were, and wedded were the couple whose ad- 
ventures we have chronicled as one of the unwritten dramas min- 
gled in the terrible time of Spottsylvania. 

Of Captain Killbrag nothing more was ever heard, for that val- 
liant ruffian was mortally wounded in a passage at arms between 
his troopers and a portion of Sheridan’s cavalry at Meadow 
Bridge. 


[THE END.] 


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